Increase in temporary jobs edges unemployment rate down :: Political News and commentaries

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December 4, 2009

Increase in temporary jobs edges unemployment rate down

There's been an holiday-related increase in temporary jobs and people are dropping from the unemployment rolls. That's the real message from the job numbers as the unemployment rate eased back two-tenths of a point to 10.0%. As Ed Morrissey points out, the number of chronically unemployed rose again, indicating that the front-line decrease does not capture the full direction of unemployment.

And as Jim Geraghty notes:

... if you hear any fool on the left contending that the Obama administration can be credited with turning the economy around, the BLS release gives us a lot of reasons to point out our economy has steadily deteriorated during this year: "Last month, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) rose by 293,000 to 5.9 million. The percentage of unemployed persons jobless for 27 weeks or more increased by 2.7 percentage points to 38.3 percent."

Also note "construction employment declined by 27,000 over the month." Every month since the stimulus passed, employment in the construction field has dropped, confirming the president's admission that the "shovel ready" slogan of the stimulus package was bunk.

Meanwhile, Americans can't expect much to come out of Obama's "photo-op" of a job summit. Clearly, he was looking to the wrong people for answers.

Posted by Richard at December 4, 2009 9:35 AM

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