Overall employment changed little in July as the nation added jobs in health care, retail trade, manufacturing, and mining – but lost jobs in government employment, according to a release by a government agency on Friday.
Employment rose by 117,000 last month and the unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 9.1% after a 0.1 percentage point increase in the month before, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its monthly report. The unemployment rate was 9.5% in July of 2010.
Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in a statement, “This is encouraging news, but it also shows that we need to keep fighting for what we know has worked throughout this recovery. That means extending the payroll tax cuts and continuing to support those who are out of work through no fault of their own by extending federal funding for the unemployment insurance system.
“This month’s report shows yet again that private sector job growth faces difficult headwinds, as job losses in state and local governments continue to hold us back, Solis added. “Budget cuts in state and local government have led to the loss of 340,000 jobs in the last 12 months alone.”
The labor force was reported to be 153.2 million, and 13.9 million remained unemployed in July. Of the jobless, almost half – 44.4% – have been long-term unemployed for 27 weeks or more.
America’s young people continue to meet extreme difficulty in finding work; the unemployment rate for teenagers is the highest among all other groups at 25%. By comparison, the unemployment rate for adult men and adult women were 9.1% and 7.9%, respectively. In other worker groups as classified by the BLS, the unemployment rate was 15.9% for blacks, 11.3% for Hispanics, 8.1% for whites, and 7.7% for Asians.
While the national unemployment rate has hovered around 9% and netted little change since the beginning of the year, some metros continue to have jobless rates much better or worse than the nation as a whole.
Of the 372 metropolitan areas surveyed by the BLS in June, unemployment rates were lower than they were a year before in 224 metropolitan areas, higher in 127 areas and unchanged in 21 areas, according to a separate report released by the agency on Wednesday.
Twelve areas recorded unemployment rates of at least 15%. The highest recorded unemployment rate was in El Centro, CA at 28.5%, followed closely by Yuma, AZ at 26.9%. The remaining 10 metro areas with jobless rates above 15% were all located in California.
Nine metro areas had rates of less than 5%; seven of these metros were located in the West North Central Region. The lowest unemployment in the nation was recorded in Bismark, ND at 3.6%. The next lowest jobless rates were in Lincoln, NE at 4.1% and Fargo, ND at 4.2%.
Of the 49 metros with a population of 1 million or more, the San Bernardino, CA area had the highest unemployment rate at 14.2%, followed by the Las Vegas, NV area at 13.8%. There were another fifteen large-city areas that also had jobless rates of 10% and above.
The lowest unemployment rates of the big metro areas were in Oklahoma City, OK at 5.7% and the Washington, DC area at 6.2%.
Source:
U.S. Department of Labor
