Oi. 8.5. That’s our unemployment rate now. For a clear and comprehensive view of what is going on with unemployment–including the rates for men (8.8 percent), women (7.0 percent), African Americans (13.3 percent), Hispanics (11.4 percent), whites (7.9 percent)–read Center for American Progress’s Heather Boushey’s report, “No Good News for Workers.”
Read through to the part about how many discouraged workers there are–people who no longer check in as unemployed–and then read on to the part about average number of hours per week people are getting. At 33.2, it is the lowest ever since these data were first collected in 1964!
On Monday, Deborah Siegel gave a talk on the “Gender Shakeup at the Recession” at Framingham State College and that’s on our mind: add this factlet to the shakeup list and ponder: the gap between men’s and women’s unemployment, Boushey reports, is the highest its been since 1949.
Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out that, “the disproportionate job loss in construction and manufacturing is reflected in the sharp gap that has opened up between the unemployment rates for men and women.” Baker also covers the unemployment numbers–and he includes a discussion of the accelerating rate of unemployment among college graduates. It is worth a read to get the whole picture.
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