Unemployment rate reaches a 26-year high

By Raw Story

Published: September 4, 2009
Even though the unemployment rate has officially reached a 26-year high, there are indicators that the recession might not be worsening.

The US unemployment rate jumped to 9.7 percent in August as 216,000 jobs were lost, the government said Friday in a report showing improving labor market conditions.

The jobless rate rose three-tenths of a point to the highest since June 1983, but the data nonetheless showed an easing of the massive pace of job losses in an economy struggling to emerge from recession.

The Labor Department report, seen as one of the best indicators of economic momentum, showed job losses narrowed considerably. Revised rate showed 276,000 jobs lost in July and 463,000 in June, higher than prior estimates of 247,00 and 443,000, respectively.

The Washington Post reports, “The rate of job losses has been declining, if haltingly, since winter. The August numbers, bad as they are, do offer hope that job losses will continue tapering off. Economists generally consider the job loss numbers to be a more reliable month-to-month barometer of the economy than the unemployment rate, and that measure indicated the slowest rate of job loss since August 2008. ”

Like all unemployment reports, this one does not count people whose benefits ran out who may still be looking for work, so the rate could be higher.