Unemployment Rate Rises To 9.8 Percent; U.S. Economy Shed 263,000 Jobs In September, page 1

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Topic started on 2-10-2009 @ 08:26 AM by Tentickles

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WASHINGTON — The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since June 1983, as employers cut far more jobs than expected. The report is evidence that the worst recession since the 1930s is still inflicting widespread pain.

Persistently high unemployment could weaken the recovery as consumers, concerned about their jobs and incomes, restrain spending. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation's economy.

The Labor Department said Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That's worse than Wall Street economists' expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in August, matching expectations.

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

More than a half-million unemployed people gave up looking for work last month. Had they continued searching, the official jobless rate would have been higher.

All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And more than 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

Many analysts expect the economy grew at a healthy clip in the July-September quarter, technically ending the recession, but few think the recovery will be strong enough to lower the jobless rate. Most economists expect the rate to top 10 percent and keep climbing.

I havent been active very much on ATS this last month. Partly due to a new video game, but mostly because I have been waiting.

Waiting for what you ask?
Waiting for the economy to start slipping.

I have silently watched the markets, the economic numbers and many other indicators.

I am telling you now: Things are going to get worse. Much worse.

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 08:42 AM by DaddyBare

Well States offer 26 weeks of benefits, with the average payment about $300 a week. Over the past two years Congress has stepped in several times to extend the length of benefits or help out state unemployment funds. The stimulus act passed last February also added $25 of federal money to weekly benefits...

so we have just over 15 million making $325 a month... heck of a recovery plan.... To bad more than half of them will be dropped from the roles in the coming six months... But the main stream media is cheering a raise in prices for all goods and services as being a sign of an improving economy... yeah right...

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 08:47 AM by frostback

Tentickles ,I have also been waiting for the other shoe to drop.I have been reading some of the reports comming out today... pretty bleak I would say...people will have to stop drinking the msm/big gov. koolaid and start paying attention now! I can't belive that anyone would think that printing up a bunch of fake money and pumping it into an economy that is terminal is a good plan. There is no real recovery for this mess going on, I think (some times a dangerous thing)that the market never really bottomed out and the more data that comes out the more nervous China is going to get not to mention the wall street types around the world I predict that the market is going under 6000 soon .

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 09:14 AM by St Udio

you said;

"I have silently watched the markets, the economic numbers and many other indicators.

I am telling you now: Things are going to get worse. Much worse"

i ask;

do you have a link to what the official Government CPI rate was for the 3rd quarter of 2009 ?

that CPI # is what determines the annual COLA (cost of living allowence)
for all the retired & disabled Americans with Social Security checks.

If those ~25 million people get shafted, and get no increases, then YES i feel it is extremely likely the economic landscape will worsen !

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 09:34 AM by DaddyBare

reply to post by St Udio

In May of this year, the Congressional Budget Office announced its plans to eliminate the Social Security “Cost of Living Allowance” (COLA) increase for 2010 and 2011. The decision to remove the “COLA” has hit hard to some as it will be the first time in 35 years that the increase will not be available, not that those increases were ever huge... $1,100 for singles and $1,200 per month for married couple, on average

They even left the the years after up in the air, who's to say when or if they will ever see another... the next COLA doesn't come out until OCT 15th ... August was up only slightly from July showing retailers are holding prices steady but as I'm sure you've already noticed your getting less in those packages you buy at the store so in essence your getting less for the same money...

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 09:38 AM by xynephadyn

I can say that this is TRUE.

I know 6 friends, from the following fortune 500 companies who were laid off in September

Lexmark
Anheiser Bush
Fannie Mae
IBM

My husband who works for Lexmark, has been terrified as they are laying off people every week now and both of his bestfriends lost his job. Luckily he hasnt lost his job yet- but we are freaking out that it is just around the corner. There is no end in sight for this to turn around unless the sales pick up... and if companies keep laying people off- that will not happen for a long time to come.

[edit on 2-10-2009 by xynephadyn]

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 09:44 AM by RoofMonkey

reply to post by xynephadyn

It's not just there, those are the relatively high quality jobs... APAC (the paving company) has gone through a series of pruning cycles. Those are the in the dirt, blue collar, "I got to get something on the table for the family to eat" jobs.

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 09:49 AM by rogerstigers

Agreed. This is the ticking time bomb that is being ignored. The FED and other organizations are doing a great job at distracting everyone (well, maybe not ATS

) with glittery stories about this and that, but ignoring the unemployment issue. Now I hear that we are beginning to see inflation again. This does not bode well for anyone. Inflation + Rampant Unemployment = BAD.

I stand by my earlier predictions. Unemployment roles will lead to a new collapse in the housing markets. This collapse will create a cascading collapse to the financial markets and take down a whole host of supplementary industries along the way. We are only at the halfway mark on this thing.

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 12:50 PM by amaranth

The stock market has been down 6 out of the last 7 days, and is also down today.

Is this because people are finally realizing that there are no green shoots and that things are getting worse and not better?

Or is it because the dollar was falling, so TPTB needed to bring the market down to drive the dollar up?

Hard to tell nowdays.

At some points, this whole mess is going to come unglued and maybe then the American public will realize that we are screwed.

I keep hearing the term "jobless recovery", what a joke.

People who do not have jobs, have no money to spend-there will be no recovery without a corresponding increase in personal income.

When will there be an increase in personal income? Never, if you really look at the state of the current economy, as all of our jobs have been shipped overseas. They can extend unemployment forever and all that will do is keep people from staving to death, or from becoming homeless.

[edit on 2-10-2009 by amaranth]
edited for spelling

[edit on 2-10-2009 by amaranth]

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 01:03 PM by whoshotJR

reply to post by Tentickles

Sounds like somebody is spending too much time playing aion and not on ATS enough!

Nice article, things are definitely not looking great for us but I like how they are finally starting to paint the true picture and talk about the 17%+ number of people really without jobs.

reply posted on 2-10-2009 @ 01:15 PM by Eurisko2012

Originally posted by xynephadyn
I can say that this is TRUE.

I know 6 friends, from the following fortune 500 companies who were laid off in September

Lexmark
Anheiser Bush
Fannie Mae
IBM

My husband who works for Lexmark, has been terrified as they are laying off people every week now and both of his bestfriends lost his job. Luckily he hasnt lost his job yet- but we are freaking out that it is just around the corner. There is no end in sight for this to turn around unless the sales pick up... and if companies keep laying people off- that will not happen for a long time to come.

[edit on 2-10-2009 by xynephadyn]

Thanks for the truth.
It's clear to me that the U.S. economy just needs something new.
In the 1990s it was "The Internet" dot com bubble.
eBay - Amazon - Google - Yahoo - Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
The U.S. Government actually ran a surplus.
No deficit.
Now we need something else.....NOW!
I know we have the advanced technology. We are just sitting
on it.
I think i know what the next NEW thing is.
-Artificial Gravity Wave Generators -
Watch a DVD of Back to the Future II.
Skyways instead of highways.
Floating cities in the sky.
Tourism to the moon.
Mining on the moon. - Helium 3 -

Universal Health Care/ ObamaCare is not it!

reply posted on 3-10-2009 @ 05:42 PM by Tentickles

Originally posted by whoshotJR
reply to post by Tentickles

Sounds like somebody is spending too much time playing aion and not on ATS enough!

Nice article, things are definitely not looking great for us but I like how they are finally starting to paint the true picture and talk about the 17%+ number of people really without jobs.

Actually playing Fallen Earth, Aion is to ehhhh for me.

I love that the MSM is finally admitting some things.

They are still wayyyy behind on the times though.

reply posted on 8-10-2009 @ 02:24 AM by exile1981

Not sure if the same thing is happening in the US, but in Canada companies are moving employees to job sharing. I have a friend who headed a 6 person department, each round of layoffs has taken away another person on her team. Till there were two of them left. The big boss came and gave her two options, either lay off her last helper or both of them could move to 60% time job sharers. That means one works Mon-wed and the other wed to friday and the altenate weeks. She chose not to let her last employee go and take the job sharing as the other lady is a single mom. EI kicks in money to pay 60% of the wages you are loosing out on for upto a year. There is a max they will kick in (anyone making over 40k per year will hit the max). If you get laid off during the year you still get your full # of weeks of EI.

I did a little checking because I was curious and it seems that even though job sharers are getting federal EI money they are not listed as unemplyed in the official #'s.

So I wonder what the real numbers look like if you include what I call the underemployed. Those people who work less than 30 hrs per week or are job sharing.

reply posted on 8-10-2009 @ 06:13 AM by DaddyBare

reply to post by exile1981

I cant speak for Canada... but here in the USofA the Department of labor measures unemployment in 6 categories... the stated unemployment rate of 9.8% is from the U-3 table...

underemployed like your asking about are included on the never published U-6 table and here in the states that number is over 17%

[edit on 8-10-2009 by DaddyBare]

reply posted on 8-10-2009 @ 10:18 AM by RoofMonkey

Well... technically, if you take the "official" (the U-3) and you add in the "not in labor force but want a job now" value of 5,650,000 (series ID LNU05026639), you get different numbers.

153,617,000 (Civilian Labor Force)

9.5% -> 14,593,615 (U-3, Not Seasonally Adjusted)

+ 5,650,000 (series ID LNU05026639)

= 20,243,615

20,243,615 / (153,617,000 + 5,650,000) = 0.127 = 12.7%

If you do the same for the U6 data:

153,617,000 (Civilian Labor Force)

16.1% -> 24,732,337 (U-6, Not Seasonally Adjusted)

+ 5,650,000 (series ID LNU05026639)

= 30,382,337

30,382,337 / (153,617,000 + 5,650,000) = 0.1908 = 19.08%

So... 12.7% for the official U3 + "them that don't count", and 19.08% for the U-6 + "them that don't count."

Oddly enough, this fits (to a degree) a projection of around ~14% unemployment by November that one of my past data runs came up with. It's in error since I didn't toss in that "them that don't count" group that is included here.

Figures can lie because liers can figure. Including myself. Do with it what you will. Draw your own conclusions.

Edit Add: Data Comes from www.bls.gov...

Some definitions from BLS:

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

U-6 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

LNU05026639
Series title: (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now

Sung to the tune of "It's Begining to Look a Lot Like Christmas"

"It's beginning to look like the s###, is gonna hit the fan..."

Star for DaddyBare's sig photo.