Euquant

The November jobs report showed the rate of unemployment decreased from 9.1% to 9.0% in October. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that it appears the mounting uncertainty around the European debt crisis failed to draw the US economy into a double-dip recession. The bad news is that jobs are being created at an extremely slow pace. In fact, so slow that it is difficult to convince 13.9 million unemployed persons that the last recession ever ended. A good portion of the slow growth is being caused by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

Economists had expected to see a larger increase in the number of private sector jobs; instead only 104,000 were added. This means that after the government’s 24,000 job cuts are subtracted, only 80,000 new jobs were created in October. A more favorable number would have been 125,000 -- yet that is only one-half of what is needed each month to actually reduce the high rate of unemployment significantly.

Certain sectors of the labor market showed improvements that are worth noting. For example, the extremely high unemployment among teenagers continued to decline, from 24.6% to 24.1%. Unemployment among African-Americans also declined. After peaking in August at 16.7%, the unemployment rate among blacks decreased to 16.0% in September and declined further to 15.1% in October. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate for persons with less than a high school educational level did not change much and remains at 13.8%. Perhaps the biggest labor market development occurred among the 9.3 million people who are unemployed i.e., those who would like to work full- time but can only get part-time work. Their number decreased by almost 400,000.