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| Obama: Making this time different than all the rest |
The BLS employment situation report is late, here, due to the government shutdown.
The number of unemployed remains high at 11.3 million, accounted for in the headline rate of 7.2%. The U6 measure at 13.6% includes those, plus the part-time for economic reasons and the marginally attached workers, which all together still number 21.5 million, unchanged from August.
Just 148,000 jobs are said to have been added in September, but the average number of jobs added monthly over the last year now comes in at 185,000, or 2.22 million. In August the figure was 184,000 and two months prior to that 182,000, so there has been very minor progress in job growth.
Average hours worked remains unchanged at 34.5 hours for private non-farm employment, and average hourly earnings are up 2.1% in the last year, or 49 cents, to $24.09/hour.
Don't spend it all in one place.
Obama's employment recession, already easily the very worst and deepest in the post-war, is now 1.75 years longer than Bush's at 5.67 years and counting. And unless things improve dramatically on the jobs front, it looks to me like it's going to take almost another year for Obama's red line in the graph to get back to zero.
