The employment situation is grim.Employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the officially measured unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.When October job loss is combined with the 127,000 jobs lost in August and 284,000 jobs lost in September, 661,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed in the last three months alone.The New York Times reports this is the highest decline in fourteen years.
Closer scrutiny of the jobs reports reveals that besides the 10,100,000 officially tallied unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 6,700,000 workers able and willing to work full time but who were forced to take part-time employment because of poor economic conditions. An additional 1,600,000 people wanted to work and had looked for employment during the last 12 months but were unable to find jobs. When these workers are added to the official count, the “real rate” of unemployment reaches 11.8%. The BLS acknowledges this in its table of “alternative measures of labor underutilization.”
“Congress has the opportunity to extend unemployment benefits during the lame duck session and we strongly urge them to do so as part of a second economic stimulus package or as a stand alone bill,” said Darryl Fagin, ADA Legislative Director.“It’s crisis time for working people and it would be a catastrophic failure of leadership for Congress and the President to do nothing.”
