The Employment Situation

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a monthly analysis of “The Employment Situation”. I will be doing an analysis of the November 2015 news release. You can find the information I used at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ reports include things such as unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, and employment population ratio. The unemployment rate is the measure of the labor force that does not have a job, but they are actively seeking employment. The labor force participation is the rate at which people that are unemployed and actively seeking a job, combined with the rate at which people are employed. The employment population ratio is a measure of employed people in the labor force divided by the working age population. “The Employment Situation” provides a path for us to understand the economy activity.

                The unemployment rate for November 2015 stayed at 5.0 percent. In the United States there are about 7.9 million people unemployed. In the year 2015 the unemployment rate is down 0.8 percent. I believe in 2016 we will also see a downward trend of unemployment. The number of health care employment increased by 24,000 in the month of December. Construction also saw an increase of workers by 46,000. There was a decrease in job for mining. Mining has been steadily decreasing since December 2014. Teenagers have the highest unemployment rate at 15.7 percent. They might have the highest unemployment rate because they are in school, or they lack job experience. All of these numbers contribute to the unemployment rate.  

The labor force participation rate did not change from 62.5 percent in November 2015. The labor participation rate is the rate at which people that are unemployed and actively seeking a job, combined with the rate at which people are employed. For people to be included in the labor force, they have to be actively looking for a job. If a person stops looking for a job they are no longer included in the labor force, which will in turn change the labor force participation rate.

The employment population ratio did not change as well from the 59.3 percent. The employment population ratio is the number of employed workers divided by working age population. This ratio measures the number of people able to work compared to the number that actually are working.

I believe with the holidays coming there will continue to be an increase of part time jobs. The number of part time workers increase in November by 319,000. These part time workers are workers that are working because hours were cut back, or because they were not able to find full time work. The number of hours part time workers will work is going to increase due to long retail hours for the holidays.

In looking at the graphs provided in the ““The Employment Situation” I believe in 2016 the unemployment rate will continue to have negative slope. We have been on a stead decrease of 0.8 percent in unemployment, but as we discussed in class we have been in recovery for a while now. We might see an increase in unemployment if we see a recession in 2016.

The Employment Situation- November 2015. (2015, December 4). Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved December 10^th, 2015 from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ewpsit.pdf