New Unemployment Figures Put Official Jobless Rate at 9.8 Percent, Broader Jobless Rate at 17 Percent
The nation’s unemployment rate edged higher in November, the Labor Department reported this week, with the official jobless rate climbing to 9.8 percent and a broader measure that captures the full scope of the labor market’s weakness holding steady at 17 percent.
A Report That Caught Economists Off Guard
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that just 39,000 jobs were added nationwide in November — a sharp disappointment against economist forecasts that had projected roughly 150,000 new jobs, according to contemporaneous reporting from the New York Times. The official unemployment rate ticked up from 9.6 percent, where it had held steady for the previous three months, to 9.8 percent — pushing the total number of unemployed Americans to 15.1 million.
The disappointing headline numbers masked some unevenness beneath the surface. Temporary help services and health care continued adding jobs at a steady pace, while retail trade shed positions during the same month, according to the BLS’s official release. Unemployment rates rose for adult men, to 10.0 percent, and adult women, to 8.4 percent, over the month, while the jobless rate for Black workers held at 16.0 percent and the rate for Hispanic workers climbed to 13.2 percent — underscoring how unevenly the recession’s damage continued to fall across different segments of the workforce more than a year after the broader economy had technically begun recovering.
The Number Behind the Number
While the official 9.8 percent figure captures only those actively searching for work, economists and labor advocates have long pointed to a separate, broader measure — known as U-6, or the underemployment rate — as a more complete picture of labor market distress. That broader measure, which includes not just the officially unemployed but also workers who have given up actively searching and those stuck in part-time positions despite wanting full-time work, held steady at 17 percent in November, according to PBS NewsHour’s breakdown of the report — meaning nearly one in six American workers who wanted full employment couldn’t find it.
The report also highlighted a particularly troubling trend within the ranks of the unemployed: the number of long-term unemployed, defined as those out of work for 27 weeks or longer, remained little changed at 6.3 million people, accounting for nearly 42 percent of all unemployed workers. Economists have warned that extended unemployment carries compounding costs beyond lost income alone, as skills atrophy and employers grow increasingly reluctant to hire candidates with long employment gaps — a dynamic that risks locking a significant share of the workforce out of the recovery even as other economic indicators slowly improve.
A Recovery That Doesn’t Feel Like One
November’s disappointing figures fit a broader pattern that would persist for months afterward: modest, uneven job growth that consistently fell short of what economists calculated was necessary to meaningfully bring down the unemployment rate. At the pace of job creation seen through much of this period, economic analysts would later calculate it could take well over a decade to return to pre-recession employment levels — a sobering reality for the millions of workers whose job searches were, by November 2010, already stretching well past six months with no end clearly in sight.
For related coverage of labor market conditions, see our piece on women in rural India’s expanding agricultural role, or browse our full Labor & Economy archive.