The following is a statement from Working America.
The increase in jobs growth reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—200,000 jobs gained as unemployment fell to 8.5 percent—is a modest improvement but one that remains virtually invisible to Working America’s 3 million members. Small improvements in jobs numbers are welcome news, but they are not enough.
Working America members are among the nearly 6 million people who have been jobless for more than six months. Employment in communities of color remains an ongoing catastrophe. And many workers have given up looking for work, leaving them uncounted in the statistics we read every month.
As corporations sit on huge piles of cash, they refuse to hire, devastating the economy. Not only are millions without work, there are 7.5 million homes that have entered into the foreclosure process, with 4.8 million more homes at risk.
Lawmakers should be calling for robust investment in infrastructure to rebuild crumbling roads, schools and bridges. They should be protecting homeowners and consumers from runaway banks and a financial system that favors the 1%. They should be holding accountable corporations who hoard their profits, rather than hire in the United States. Those would be the modest improvements to our economy worth celebrating.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The official figures will tell you there are 1,371,000 people like Randy Moe.
RANDY MOE, 99ER CHICAGO: I was unemployed, laid off, August 15, 2008, and collected benefits until about six weeks ago.
GERSH: That’s because Moe hit the limit on benefits. In most states, that’s 99 weeks, which is why many of those who have run out call themselves “99ers.”
MOE: We’ve become thrown away people. They’re losing a lot of valuable people, the country is.
GERSH: Randy Moe found other 99ers online. A dozen meet regularly in this chat room. They talk about finding a job and about lobbying Congress for help. They’re part of a grassroots movement to add what’s called a tier five to unemployment insurance — another 20 weeks of benefits.
Unemploymentality has a lot of links to other unemployed bloggers, some helpful options (look for Broke-Ass Stuart’s money saving recommendations) and there’s also plenty of entertainment.
The only way to end long term unemployment is to put a human face on it.
A hearing focused on the growing crisis of long-term unemployment was held yesterday on Capitol Hill. The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, chaired by Seattle-area Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), heard from several noted economists and policy advocates on effective measures to address the needs of the nearly 7 million American workers who have been jobless for six months or more. Videos of the first two witnesses’ statements appear below in this post.
It’s worth noting that over the entire eight years of the Bush Administration, our economy actually had a net decline in private sector employment. So I must say that I find it bewildering when my Republican colleagues say that more Bush-like policies, like tax cuts for the rich and deregulation, will spur more employment. We tried their way for eight years, and ended up with the worst economy in 70 years. Even with the recent progress in creating jobs, we still need to face up to a very big problem.
To return to a pre-recession labor market, we need to create roughly 10 million new jobs, meaning we have to consistently produce hundreds of thousands of jobs every single month for about five years. This means that even under the most optimistic scenarios for our economy, many Americans will continue to struggle with prolonged periods of unemployment.
These are hard working Americans who have played by the rules and lost their jobs through no fault of their own. They have spent their savings, and must face the daily fear that they will lose their home or fail to put food on the table. And now many of them will soon lose their last lifeline, unemployment benefits.
We are at a high risk of abandoning millions of Americans who have worked hard and played by the rules, but now find themselves with no job, no savings and no support.
Our first priority must be to maintain the current emergency federal unemployment benefits to prevent millions of workers from losing their benefits before the end of the year.
We also must come to grips with the fact that even if we pass an extension of the program, as many as three million Americans will still exhaust all of the emergency benefits before the end of this year.
People from all over the country call my office pleading for additional weeks of benefits as they desperately continue their search for work. They ask what will happen to them once their unemployment checks have stopped, and quite frankly, I don’t have an adequate response. And no one is calling my office because they are sitting at home and having a great time collecting their unemployment benefits.
Contrary to what some of my colleagues contend, unemployment insurance is not stopping people from looking for work. Arguing that unemployment insurance prevents people from looking for work is a slap in the face to the millions of Americans who have applied to hundreds of jobs over the last two years only to be repeatedly rejected because of unprecedented competition in an economy in shambles.
I am asking our witnesses today to help us think about additional steps to help the long-term unemployed as they try to return to work. I hope all of you will provide us with specific recommendations, whether it is additional extended benefits, increased access to training, wage supplements to help with re-employment, direct employment through publicly-funded jobs, or any other solutions you think will help these workers.
The first two witnesses were Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute, and Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress.
More on the hearing and testimony of additional witnesses is available here.
As Congress gets ready to take up the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, which includes the urgently needed continuation of eligibility for extended federal jobless benefits through the end of 2010, research shows that the number of unemployed Americans is not declining and that long-term unemployment continues to rise.
The total number of Americans officially unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, remains near its peak during the Great Recession, and while virtually unchanged in the last six months, has been increasing again recently.
The above graph shows the total number of unemployed aged 16 and up from the start of 2007 through April of this year. BLS database queries based on age group demographics produced the following series of graphs. They show that unemployment among younger and older workers continues to rise.
Unemployed in thousands for those aged 16 to 24:
And for workers aged 55 and up:
The 35 to 44 age group is the only one that has shown a declining number of unemployed in the last six months:
The number of unemployed in the 25 to 34 age group remains high and has been rising again recently:
Virtually unchanged in the last six months is the number of unemployed ages 44 to 55:
As Laura reported earlier, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is telling Congress to “walk the walk” for jobs by passing the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes bill this week.
Meanwhile, the persistent rise in long-term unemployment continues unabated. The percent of the unemployed who have been jobless for more than six months is approaching 50 percent:
And the number of Americans unemployed for 27 weeks or more is now approaching 7 million.
With 5.6 job seekers for every current job opening, the need to continue eligibility for extended federal unemployment insurance is undeniable. But for those exhausting their 26-week state benefits, and those needing to apply for their next EUC Tier I through IV, that eligibility will end June 2nd if Congress fails to act.
The National Employment Law Project estimates that 1.2 million long-term jobless Americans would lose their unemployment insurance in June alone if the bill is not passed. And an economy struggling to get traction for recovery could slide back down in the recessionary ditch.
The jobs report for April released this morning by the Labor Department showed the largest monthly gain in employment in four years even as the number of unemployed swelled to 15.3 million and the unemployment rate rose to 9.9%.
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000 in April, the unemployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent, and the labor force increased sharply, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The household survey data showed:
In April, the number of unemployed persons was 15.3 million, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent. The rate had been 9.7 percent for the first 3 months of this year.
Data from the employer survey showed:
In April, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000. Sizable employment gains occurred in manufacturing, professional and business services, health care, and in leisure and hospitality. Federal government employment increased due to the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Since December, nonfarm payroll employment has expanded by 573,000, with 483,000 jobs added in the private sector. The vast majority of job growth occurred during the last 2 months.
Federal government employment was up in April, reflecting the hiring of 66,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.
The household data reported a 550,000 increase in the number of employed persons as well as an increase of 255,000 unemployed. The combined increase of 805,000 in the official labor force was due primarily to more people actively seeking work. But the increase in the number of unemployed to 15.3 million drove the unemployment rate up to 9.9%.
Clearly, there’s some definite progress — but nowhere near enough yet to begin to make up the 11 million jobs deficit caused by the Great Recession.
Here’s a summary of some early reporting on the latest jobs figures:
The American economy added an unexpectedly strong 290,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent, the government said Friday.
Analysts had expected a gain of about 190,000 in the month.
With revisions on Friday, April was the fourth consecutive month that the economy added workers (a revised 230,000 jobs were added in March instead of 162,000), the job market still has a long way to go before it can be counted on to provide a base for a sustained economic recovery. More than 15.3 million were unemployed last month.
Besides March, February was revised from a loss of 14,000 jobs to a gain of 39,000. With a January gain of 14,000, the cumulative increase came to 573,000 jobs in four months.
The Times also noted that many people finding work are taking jobs for much less pay than they used to make before becoming unemployed.
Meteor Blades at Daily Kos notes the continuing rise in long-term unemployment:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its seasonally adjusted calculations this morning that some 290,000 new jobs were created in April, far above the consensus of experts surveyed by Bloomberg earlier in the week. Those numbers were made better by the fact that only 66,000 of the new jobs were temporary Census hires, just two-thirds of what was expected. As large numbers of Americans returned to the labor force, the official unemployment rate rose to 9.9%. Some 15.3 million Americans are now officially out of work.
The U6 unemployment rate, an alternative measure that includes underemployed Americans and some who have become too discouraged to look for jobs, rose to 17.1%. The number of long-term unemployed, those without jobs for 27 weeks or more, rose to a new record high of 6.7 million.
Economists say that in order for substantial, sustainable job growth to occur, the weekly new jobless claims number needs to get down into the low 400,000s or upper 300,000s and stay there. Yesterday, the government reported that 444,000 Americans filed jobless claims last week, the third straight week of declines.
Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute reports “Most private sector job growth in four years, but jobless rate rises to 9.9%”:
The increase in employment was not large enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising to 9.9%, as 805,000 workers entered the labor force. The recent surge in the labor force is a partial correction for the labor force decline of the second half of 2009, but there remains a backlog of people waiting to enter or re-enter the labor market in search of work. This will continue to keep the unemployment rate elevated even as jobs are added.
Another ongoing issue is long-term unemployment. The number of people who have been unemployed for more than six months is now 6.7 million and growing. Currently, 45.9% of this country’s 15.3 million unemployed workers have been unemployed for more than half a year.
The March employment summary showed a net jobs increase of 162,000 for the month, the best result reported by employers since October 2007, raising hopes that the deepest jobs recession since the Great Depression is at least stabilizing.
But there was little change in overall unemployment, still stuck at 9.7 percent. The number of people officially unemployed increased by 134,000 to more than 15 million. Another 2.3 million wanted work but were not counted in the labor force. And the number of people working only part-time, but wanting full-time work, increased by a seasonally adjusted 263,000 to more than 9 million.
The biggest story hidden in the latest jobs report, though, is the continuing massive increase in long-term unemployment, with the number of those jobless for 6 months or longer increasing by more than 400,000 in March to more than 6.5 million.
A small increase was reported in construction jobs, after nearly three years of continuous declines. But how much of that was due to a bounce after February’s snowstorms is difficult to gauge. Modest job gains were also reported for durable goods manufacturing, retail, education and health care.
But more than half of the total jobs increase was in temporary hiring, with private employers adding 40,000 temporary jobs and the federal government adding 48,000 temporary census workers. Fully one-third of private employer jobs added in March were temporary jobs.
“It’s not a great picture, but at least things are not getting worse,” economist Dean Baker told me in an email. Baker’s Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that nominal wages fell in March for just the sixth time since 1964, something that is “not a good sign for future income growth.”
Persistent high jobless rates not only continued but increased slightly again for African-Americans, Hispanics and teenagers. Unemployment for all teens increased 1.1 percent to 26.1 percent. The jobless rate for blacks increased 0.7 percent to 16.5 percent. Hispanic unemployment was up 0.2 percent to 12.6 percent in March.
But the worst and most troubling news by far was in the data for the longer-term unemployed.
While the number of people unemployed for less than 15 weeks and less than 5 weeks both declined, those unemployed for more than 26 weeks increased dramatically.
Seasonally adjusted, those unemployed for 27 weeks or more increased by 414,000 to more than 6.5 million.
The not seasonally adjusted numbers are even worse: those unemployed for 27 weeks or more increased 425,000 to more than 6.7 million.
The percent of the unemployed who have been jobless for 6 months or more continued to increase, to a seasonally adjusted record of 44.1 percent and to 42.8 percent not seasonally adjusted.
The average duration of unemployment hit another record at 32.1 weeks.
Source: Paper Economy
A set of interactive historical charts is available by clicking on the graphs here from Paper Economy.
Long-term unemployment has reached catastrophic proportions. The number of net jobs being created is nowhere near the 400,000 per month baseline that is needed to begin to bring employment levels back to even pre-recession levels in the next few years. When we need millions of new full-time jobs, most of the small number of jobs being created are either temporary or part-time. And even those are not being filled by the long-term unemployed.
Meanwhile, with Congress having failed to overcome the Republican obstruction of extended unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits, one million long-term jobless are at risk of losing benefits this month, with more than 200,000 set to lose their benefits in the next week alone before Congress reconvenes.
