October Unemployment = 7.9%

This morning was the important jobs report for October. This will be the last major economic report before the election next week.

The government said that the U.S. economy created 171,000 net jobs last month. The gain for August was revised upward from 142,000 to 192,000. The gain for September was also revised higher, to 148,000 from 114,000. The economy has now gained back slightly more than half of the 8.78 million jobs lost between January 2008 and February 2010.

The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8% to 7.9%. Oddly, part of the reason the unemployment rate rose is that more people rejoined the workforce looking for jobs. The official unemployment had been held down because so many people had simply stopped looking for work altogether.

For the U.S. economy to have the same jobs-to-population ratio as we had 12 years ago, we would need either 13.3 million more jobs, or 20.8 million fewer people.

Here’s a look at the unemployment for the final month before a presidential election. The current one ranks highest of the last 17.

Date Rate
Oct-12 7.876%
Oct-76 7.683%
Oct-80 7.530%
Oct-84 7.351%
Oct-92 7.341%
Oct-08 6.510%
Oct-60 6.084%
Oct-72 5.572%
Oct-04 5.454%
Oct-88 5.375%
Oct-96 5.211%
Oct-64 5.083%
Oct-00 3.880%
Oct-56 3.863%
Oct-48 3.725%
Oct-68 3.408%
Oct-52 2.968%

Posted by on November 2nd, 2012 at 3:52 pm


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