Unemployment Falls to 9.7%

Reach 500K mark as employers again cut back

(AP) - New applications for unemployment insurance reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November, a sign that employers are likely cutting jobs again as the economy slows. The Labor Department said today that initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the fourth increase in the past five weeks. Wall Street economists forecast that claims would drop. More»

(NEWSER) - A rough milestone on the jobless front: The average length of time it takes to find a job—26.2 weeks—now exceeds the standard length of unemployment benefits—26 weeks. That's first time it's happened since the Labor Department began keeping stats 60 years ago, reports Bloomberg. The bit of good news for job-seekers is that Congress has temporarily extended benefits up to 59 weeks in hard-hit states and is working on another extension. More»

Depressing: That one-day hiring binge kept us in the black

(NEWSER) - Just how lousy were today's unemployment numbers ? Employers created a meager 54,000 jobs, way under expectations. Alex Goldmark at Good points out that if not for McDonald's one-day hiring binge of 62,000 jobs, the nation would have had a net loss. "That's what makes today's numbers all the more depressing," he writes. "If it weren't for the country's largest restaurant chain going on a burger flipper binge, the reports wouldn't say 'sharp slowdown' they'd say 'reversal' or 'devastating.'" More»

And fewer new jobs than expected were created

(AP) - Employers hired only 54,000 new workers in May, the fewest in eight months, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1%. The Labor Department report offers startling evidence that the US economy is slowing, hampered by high gas prices and natural disasters in Japan that have hurt US manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal notes that 160,000 jobs were expected to be created and the unemployment rate was expected to fall to 8.9%. But more people entered the work force last month, which pushed the unemployment rate up from 9.0% in April. More»

Krugman: Why are we obsessed with the deficit when millions need jobs?

(NEWSER) - One-sixth of American workers can’t find full-time jobs, and things aren’t getting any better for them: There are nearly five times more jobless people than there are job openings, and the "average unemployed worker has been jobless for 37 weeks." Yet all we hear about from Washington is talk of reducing the deficit, notes Paul Krugman in the New York Times . “We’re well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless. Why doesn’t Washington care?” More»