June Unemployment Unchanged at 8.2%

The economy gained a mere 82,000 jobs and the number of unemployed remained virtually unchanged at 12.7 million in June, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The jobs gain came predominantly from professional and business services, and most other major industries changed little over the month, the Bureau said.

The 8.2 percent national unemployment rate also remains unchanged from the previous month and has hovered between 8.1 percent and 8.3 percent for all of 2012. The June jobless rate is 0.9 percent lower than its level of 9.1 percent a year ago.

Among ethnic groups as classified by the Labor Department, the jobless rate for blacks increased to 14.4 percent in June while it changed little or none for other groups - whites (7.4 percent), Asians (6.3 percent), and Hispanics (11.0 percent).

One in four students who planned to constructively pass the summer and earn some spending cash is finding that there are no jobs out there for them. The jobless rate for teenagers was 23.7 percent in June, while for adult men it was 7.8 percent and for adult women it was 7.4 percent.

The number of long-term unemployed was essentially unchanged in June. There were 5.4 million people who have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, accounting for nearly 42 percent of the unemployed.

The number of people who were “marginally-attached to the labor force” in June was 2.5 million, down from 2.7 million a year ago. This group includes people who wanted to work and have looked for work in the past twelve months but do not count in the government’s unemployment figures because they didn’t actively look for work in the four weeks immediately preceding the survey.

Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in the White House blog, “The economy has now added private sector jobs for 28 straight months, for a total of 4.4 million payroll jobs during that period. Employment is growing but it is not growing fast enough given the jobs deficit caused by the deep recession.”


Sources:
U.S. Department of Labor Statistics
The White House