High Jobless Rate Sets New Record
USA Today reports:
Not since the early 1980s has the nation's unemployment rate been so grim for so long, a government report due Friday is likely to show.Many economists predict the report will say that November's jobless rate held steady at 9.6%, making it the 19th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was above 9%. That breaks the post-World War II record set in the 1980s recession.
The dubious milestone shows that even if job growth picks up as expected in coming months, progress will be slow, and it will take years to put a big dent in the unemployment rate.
The current streak of above-9% unemployment is certain to far surpass the previous record. The Federal Reserve recently forecast that the jobless rate will still be hovering around 9% at the end of 2011 and will fall slowly to about 8% by the end of 2012.
The chronic level of high unemployment shows that many Americans are still suffering, even though the National Bureau of Economic Research has said the recession officially ended in June 2009. The economy lost more than 8 million jobs in the downturn.
"To anyone around the dinner table, it means little," says Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "The fact is, unemployment is going to remain flat for a year."
The picture is brightening in some ways. The closely watched ADP National Employment Report Wednesday said private employers in November added the most jobs in three years.
Most of the gains were by beleaguered small businesses, which added 54,000 jobs. Small firms have lagged in the recovery because, unlike large ones, they've struggled to get credit and haven't benefited from surging exports.
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