Feature Story

February 5, 2010

Unemployment drops to 9.7% despite more job losses

From Economic Policy Institute:

This morning’s release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the January 2010 employment report showed 20,000 jobs lost in January. Furthermore, revisions released today showed that the country had 930,000 fewer jobs last March and 1.4 million fewer jobs last December than previously estimated.

The total number of payroll jobs lost since the start of the recession in December 2007 now stands at 8.4 million.

In a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis plus the very weak jobs growth of the 2000-07 business cycle, the U.S. labor market started 2010 with fewer jobs than it had a decade ago, in January 2000, though the labor force has grown by almost 11 million workers since then.

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