Unemployment rate falls to 6.7% in December on Americans leaving the work force
The national unemployment rate declined to 6.7 percent in December, down from 7 percent a month earlier, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Payroll jobs increased a paltry 74,000, below consensus estimates of 200,000. November payroll gains were revised up from 203,000 to 241,000. Despite the huge miss in...
The national unemployment rate declined to 6.7 percent in December, down from 7 percent a month earlier, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Payroll jobs increased a paltry 74,000, below consensus estimates of 200,000. November payroll gains were revised up from 203,000 to 241,000. Despite the huge miss in payrolls, the unemployment rate declined because a record 91.8 million Americans, according to BLS, are no longer looking for work.
The unemployment rate has gradually subsided since the Great Recession, with most of the decline a result of unemployed Americans leaving the work force. In December, 347,000 Americans left the work force, leaving the labor force participation rate at its worst level since January 1978, down by 0.8 percent in 2013 to 62.8 percent.
Source: bls.gov
More than 10.4 million Americans are classified as unemployed, with 3.9 million unemployed long term – meaning they have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. Another 7.8 million are working part-time but would like to find full-time work, and 2.4 million are marginally attached to the work force – meaning they want and are available for work but have not looked in four weeks. They are not counted in the labor force.
In fact, if the labor force participation rate were the same as a year earlier the December unemployment rate would be 7.9 percent. According to BLS, there are still 1.69 million fewer employed Americans today than there were in 2007 before the Great Recession, with only 58.6 percent of Americans finding work.
Source: bls.gov
The country is still dragging along on tepid growth, with an average of 182,000 payroll jobs created per month on the year. At this rate, it will take until September 2019 to return to pre-recession employment levels.
The U.S. economy produced 7,000 fewer payroll jobs in 2013 than in 2012, showing decelerating jobs growth. This does not bode well for Illinois, a laggard state with the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the nation.