Unemployment rose to 8.9% in April-the highest level since September 1983-as businesses cut 539,000 non-farm jobs, the Department of Labor reported today.
The economy has lost 5.7 million jobs since the current recession started in December 2007. In the last year, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 6 million and the unemployment rate has increased by 3.9%.
The number of persons unemployed in April was 13.7 million, up from 13.2 million in March, when the unemployment rate was 8.5%.
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The department said the unemployment would have been even higher if it had included the 2.1 million people it describes as "marginally attached" to the labor force. Those are individuals who wanted to work and were available and had searched for a job within the last year, but not within the past four weeks. That was the same number as February and March and 675,000 more than in April 2008.
The number of jobs lost declined from the March figure of 694,000.
The number of persons unemployed for 27 weeks or more was 3.7 million, up from 3.2 million in March.
Wages remained sluggish, Average hourly earnings remained unchanged after increasing 4 cents in March. Over the last 12 months, average hourly earnings increased 3.2% and average weekly earnings rose 1.3%.
As in March, employment increased in education/health care and government while it decreased in manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services.
There were 149,000 jobs lost in manufacturing and 110,000 losses in construction.
There were 122,000 losses in professional/business services, 47,000 losses in retail and 44,000 in the leisure/hospitality field.
The number of people who worked part time out of necessity-because they could not find full-time work–was 8.9 million, the same as in March but the number has increased 3.7 million since April 2008.
The unemployment rate among certain segments of the population was: adult men, 9.4%; adult women, 7.1%; blacks, 15%; Hispanics, 11.3%; and teenagers, 21.5%.
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