Summary 14: Unemployment Looks Better

Unemployment rate falls to 10% in November
By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
(http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-12-04-unemployment-november_N.htm)

Summary: The unemployment rate fell from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in Nov. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that it was the biggest drop since April 1998. This is because employers’ cutback only 11,000 jobs instead of the 123,000 expected. The jobs lost are reported to be the fewest since the recession started in Dec. 2007. Plus there may be signals in the Nov. jobs report that show the nation could start to gain jobs in Dec. This being several months earlier than many economists expected. Also economists can see that employers are increasing work hours to 33.2 hours and hiring temporary employees to meet the rising demands. This made the number of temporary workers jump 52,400. On top of that the percentage of the population employed or looking for work fell to 65 percent. This is the lowest since the recession began.

Session 30: Blog