http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/08/more-grim-news-jobs-front?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29&utm_content=Twitter
The Labor Department's monthly numbers are out, and it's mostly dark clouds in the jobs world. The unemployment rate remains 9.5 percent. The public sector shed more than 200,000 jobs in July, most of which were expired Census gigs. The ratio of employed Americans to the adult population dwindled slightly, but for did so for the third month in a row—a troubling sign. And the real unemployment figure—accounting for unemployment, underemployment, and discouraged workers—is stuck at 16.5 percent.
A silver lining: The private sector added 71,000 jobs in July, which, as Ezra Klein points out, is the most since April and third-best in 2010. He adds optimistically, "The 71,000 jobs we did gain came from the right place, and the jobs we lost are job losses we can prevent if Congress finds the will and the votes."
That optimism don't appear to shared by most other observers, nor backed by the Labor Department's data when you dig deeper in. For instance, the Labor Department went back and revised its jobs figures for June, reporting that 267,000 jobs were lost instead of 125,000 as initially thought. That's a major revision—and further proof that the economic recovery is far weaker than already thought.
Although the unemployment rate didn't budge, that's not because the jobs picture is getting rosier. Rather, people are still leaving the work force, quitting their search for a new job. As Zero Hedge points out, the employment-to-population ratio is the same today as it was in October 1983, per this chart:
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