October Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for October (pdf summary available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf). Highlights of the report:
Unemployment Rate
- The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6% in October.
- The percentage of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) edged up very slightly in October to a level of 41.8%, or 6.2 million persons.
- The size of the labor force fell by 254,000 in October, and remains more than one million below its peak level in May, 2009. The labor force is 5.3 million lower than it would have been if labor force growth had continued at the same pace it did between 2004 and 2007.
- There were 14.8 million unemployed persons in October.
