Unemployment Rate Unchanged for December 09

Unemployment remains unchanged at 10%. Here’s the unemployment rates (per month) for the year:


2009

January ............... 7.7
February .............. 8.2
March ................. 8.6
April ................. 8.9
May ................... 9.4
June .................. 9.5
July .................. 9.4
August ................ 9.7
September ............. 9.8
October ............... 10.2
November .............. 10.0
December .............. 10.0

I have to admit that this is kind of a shock…I was expecting this number to lower a tad to compensate workers landing jobs for the holidays. Which brings me to the UNDERemployment rate

Which increased to 17.4%

Underemployment rate is the unemployment rate + temporary workers (part-time, temp, intern, etc,etc), discouraged workers (people who leave the workforce altogether).

Some other notes from bls...

“Temporary help services added 47,000 jobs in December. Since reaching a low
point in July, temporary help services employment has risen by 166,000.”

“Among the unemployed, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27
weeks and over) continued to trend up, reaching 6.1 million. In December, 4 in
10 unemployed workers were jobless for 27 weeks or longer.”<--Duration of Unemployment

I'm assuming the increase to 17.4% for the Underemployment Rate is attributed to workers landing more part-time gigs for the holidays and what not. However I say that with trepidation because my concern with this increase is after the holidays (say end of January or so), these temp workers will not have employment. It’ll be interesting to see this underemployment rate the next couple months and more importantly how it affects the unemployment rate and duration of unemployment numbers...

...only time will tell.