Blog Post #1

Mackenzie Connolly

In the most recent Employment Situation Report issued on December 4^th 2015 by the United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics, it mentions quickly in the first paragraph that unemployment has not changed in the last month and held steady at 5%. While this may seem good, there are many other contributing factors to unemployment that are not accounted for in that initial rate that has remained steady. Under the section that says Household Survey Data, it points out that while unemployment has remained at 5%, it has dropped .8% in the last 12 months. This signifies that there are now about 1.1 million people who have gotten jobs over the last 12 months who were previously considered unemployed. This section of data also talks about the civilian labor force participation rate, which are the number of citizens of working age, who are participating in the work force which is currently at 62.5%, and has changed very little since last month. Next, it talks about the employment-population ratio, which is the number of people who are employed relative to the number of people who are of working age in the United States, which also remained fixed at around 59.3%.

The next few sections get more specific when talking about unemployment. It mentions that the number of people who are employed part time for economic reasons has increased this past month, even though it was declining in both September and November. These are people who are working part time jobs, but not by their own choosing and they would be working full time if they could. The next portions talk about the discouraged workers, which are people who are of working age but aren’t actively looking for jobs because they believe that there are not any jobs that are available to them, which remained about the same from this time last year.

As for trends across groups, there was a section under Household Survey Data that looked at race as well as sex as it corresponds to unemployment. There are .1% more men who are unemployed than women, and of the races surveyed (whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, the highest rate of unemployment was with the blacks at 9.4%, followed by Hispanics, then whites, and finally Asians.

   

One section that I found interesting was the retail trade that trended up in November, which could possibly be from an increase in retail jobs available because of the approaching holiday season. Jobs in health care are also on the rise, as well as jobs in construction, professional and technical services, and in food services and drinking places. It is a bit ironic that nearly all sectors that are surveyed by the BLS have been adding new jobs, yet the unemployment rate continues to remain steady. This is because people are waiting longer to retire so where there should be more available jobs from retired people, these types of jobs are still taken. However, in the New Year, I think that there will be a decrease in the unemployment rate due to the fact that there are so many new jobs that are being created; it’s just a matter of people taking advantage of the opportunities that are given to them.  

Citations:

The Employment Situation: November 2015. (2015, December 4). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf