Unemployment in the United States

Tyler Martinez

April 18, 2014

Dr. Kassens

           

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and analyzes information for unemployment and employment statistics.  The March Employment Situation Report was released on April 4, 2014 and the unemployment rate has stayed about the same since December 2013 (6.7%).  Unemployment is so important because if it is at a high percentile, it can really hurt the economy.  It can lead to a waste of resources, start conflict, and most importantly, it can drive many people to poverty.

 Over the past year, the unemployment rate has dropped about 0.8 %, which is good for the economy because that means more and more people are finding jobs.  The BLS reported that employment-population rate is at a steady 58.9 % which means that 58.9% of the United States population is employed.  Also the labor force participation rate is steadily at 63.2%.  Since March 2013, the top reasons for unemployment were job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, job leavers, reentrants, and new entrants.  And after looking at those reasons, those numbers have dropped since March 2013.  Also in March 2013, the unemployment rate was at 7.5% and in March 2014 it is now at 6.7%.  The main trend for unemployment rates is that they have dropped in the past year, but from month to month they are going at a constant unchanged rate; as long as people continue to find jobs, the rate will drop, helping our economy.  Another trend you can see on the report is that African Americans unemployment rate is at 12.4%, while Whites is only at 5.8%.  Yes this definitely arises the fact of discrimination of jobs, and that whites have the advantage if it were between the two for a job position.  But, we also have to look at a year ago, Blacks unemployment rate was at 13.2% and we can only hope that the rates continue to drop.  Also I looked at employment by sex and I found that men 16 years and over, had a participation rate of 69.6% and that women 16 years and over only sat at 57.2 %.  Looking at that we could assume that women are not getting the same opportunities, as men are when it comes to jobs.  But again we can only hope that these numbers will rise so more and more people are employed.  A suggestion for people to find more jobs could be to have better training programs so that workers who are jobless can acquire better working skills for available jobs. 

I found this report to be very helpful so I can actually look and see specifically who has a job and who doesn’t.  It was very interesting to see the difference for men and women, and also for races.  It was kind of an eye opener to see that big of a difference of unemployment.  I anticipate that the unemployment rate will continue to drop over the next year or two.

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000