December 4, 2009 The government reported today that only 11,000 jobs were lost in November, the fewest lost since the start of the recession.

Long term unemployment, defined to be 27 weeks or longer out of work, increased to a total 5.9 million, 38.3% or over 1 in 3 unemployed people. This is 3.8% of the total labor force—far surpassing the previous peak of 2.6% set in June 1983.

The number of unemployed persons declined slightly by 463,000 to 15.4 million. The November U-6 unemployment rate was 17.2%, a small decline from October by a third of a percentage point.

The more commonly quoted U-3 unemployment rate was 10.0 percent, declining by two tenths of a percentage point from October.

The U-6 unemployment rate includes the total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers. What is unemployment?

 

NOTE: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. For more information, see "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.

Click here for a larger graph of unemployment rates.

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