Unemployment-rate record: 14th month above 9.5%, beats record from 1982-83

Unemployment-rate record: 14th month above 9.5%

Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, October 9, 2010

The U.S. unemployment rate held steady at 9.6 percent in September as Republicans and Democrats sparred over the last national jobs report before the midterm congressional elections.
According to figures issued Friday by the Labor Department, the nation lost 95,000 jobs last month as local government layoffs wiped out modest gains in private-sector hiring.
September set an unenviable record as the 14th consecutive month that unemployment has exceeded 9.5 percent, beating the 13 months from 1982 to 1983 that had marked the longest prior spell of elevated joblessness since 1948.
House Minority Leader John Boehner used Friday's report to argue for a Republican takeover of Congress, mocking the Obama administration for promising that its stimulus program would keep unemployment under 8 percent.
"That's what you got for your $797 billion: record high unemployment," Boehner said while campaigning in his home state of Ohio.
Rep. George Miller, the Martinez Democrat allied with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the economy had been losing nearly 800,000 jobs per month under President Bush. Miller noted that September marked the ninth straight month of private-sector job gains, calling it proof of "just how much our economy has improved since the Republican recession began."
Other observers found both good and bad in the report.
"The economy is on a very slow upswing," said Sung Won Sohn, an economic forecaster with Cal State Channel Islands.
James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, told CNBC that "the risk of a double-dip recession has probably receded some in the last six to eight weeks."
No one is satisfied with overall job growth, which has been weak in this recovery - as it was during the last two recessions since 1990 as globalism and technology began to change the U.S. economy.
But while the job market is not bouncing back as strongly as had been the case in recessions before 1990, Friday's report suggests that the United States is at least following the new recovery pattern.
For instance, temporary employee hiring rose in September, continuing a yearlong uptick. As reported by The Chronicle in November and confirmed by a Labor Department study in September, since 1990 employers have hired and fired temps as a way to control labor costs during recoveries and before recessions.
Highlighting that point, the American Staffing Association said Friday that temp jobs have increased 23 percent since September 2009.
"This is the highest year-to-year percentage increase since (the Labor Department) first began measuring staffing," the group said.
But for the 14.8 million unemployed Americans, this slow-motion recovery is painful.
The average duration of unemployment now stands at eight months, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group.
About 9 million Americans are collecting unemployment benefits, with about 5 million of these getting extended benefits that are currently slated to expire Nov. 30, the group said.
The Republican minority has so far resisted efforts by majority Democrats to extend unemployment benefits and other economic stimuli, and with Congress up for grabs in November, the future direction of U.S. economic policy remains uncertain.