Unemployment Up to 9.2 Percent

Not only was June a horrible month for jobs but May was even worse than previously announced.

Not only was June a horrible month for jobs but May was even worse than previously announced.

AP (“Unemployment rose to 9.2 percent as hiring stalls“):

Hiring slowed to a near-standstill last month. Employers added the fewest jobs in nine months and theunemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent.

The economy generated only 18,000 net jobs in June, the Labor Department said Friday. And the number of jobs added in May was revised down to 25,000.

The latest report offered stark evidence that the recovery will be painfully slow. Businesses added the fewest jobs in more than a year. Governments cut 39,000 jobs. Over the past eight months, federal, state and local governments have cut a combined 238,000 positions.

Two years after the recession officially ended, companies are adding fewer workers despite record cash stockpiles and healthy profit margins.

Hiring has slowed sharply in the past two months, after the economy added an average of 215,000 jobs per month in the previous three months.

The economy typically needs to add 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. And at least twice that many jobs are needed to bring down the unemployment rate.

@mitrebox quips, “At this rate, next month the Whitehouse will be able to tweet the name of each person who found a job.” Sadly, that’s about right.

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Ben Wolf says:

    In Western Europe numbers of small businesses and the self-employed represent a far greater share of national employemn than here in the United States. Yet we seem to pursue policies intended to get large multinationals to hire people by effectively guaranteeing their profits, via a GDP growth policy. Surprise, it’s not working!

    We need a jobs policy in this country yesterday, but it doesn’t appear to be even a remote possibility so long as everyone is mesmirized by ausiterity measures which have failed in every country they’ve been implemented.

  2. Dan Costantino says:

    Fighting a $1.4 trillion budget deficit is not austerity. It is common sense.

  3. Ben Wolf says:

    @Dan Costantino: Common sense is not further weakening the economy, the result for every country which has tried austerity.

  4. Dan Costantino says:

    Yep. Show me where spending nearly double your revenue has worked! I disagree that balancing a budget is austerity. It is much simpler.