Unhappy news from the Department of Labor: The number of unemployed persons increased by 360,000 in June to 9.4 million, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.4 percent. Since March, unemployment has increased by 913,000. The rate for adult men edged up for the third month in a row; at 6.1 percent, the jobless rate for this group was 0.8 percentage point higher than in March. The teenage unemployment rate, at 19.3 percent, has trended up since the beginning of the year. Over the month, the unemployment rate for blacks increased to 11.8 percent. Jobless rates for the other major worker groups--adult women (5.2 percent), whites (5.5 percent), and Hispanics (8.4 percent)--showed little change from May. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted.
The New York Times reports this alongside a story written yesterday that says: “With more than two million jobs having disappeared since Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, he finds himself in danger of becoming the first president since Hoover to oversee a decline in the country’s employment. Economists disagree on how much blame, if any, Mr. Bush deserves for the long slump, but even White House aides view the economy as one of the only big threats to his re-election campaign. Now, a turning point could be approaching. The Labor Department will release its jobs report for June this morning, and some forecasters are predicting that it will mark the beginning of a rebound. An increase in the nation’s payrolls — the odds of which are roughly even, Wall Street economists say — would be the first since January.... But the length of this economic slowdown has surprised almost all economists, and some have begun to say there is a significant chance that the economy will not erase the jobs deficit by the end of 2004.
