What Is The Unemployment Rate
The unemployment rate is the percent of the labor force that is jobless. It is a lagging indicator, meaning that it generally rises or falls in the wake of changing economic conditions, rather than anticipating them. When the economy is in poor shape and jobs are scarce, the unemployment rate can be expected to rise. When the economy is growing at a healthy rate and jobs are relatively plentiful, it can be expected to fall.
Understanding The Unemployment Rate
The U.S. unemployment rate is released on the first Friday of every month and reports on the preceding month’s unemployment figures. The current and past editions of the report are available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. Users can generate and download tables showing any of the labor market measures named above for a specified date range.
In the U.S., the official and the most commonly cited national unemployment rate is the U-3, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases as part of its monthly employment situation report. It defines unemployed people as those who are willing and available to work, and who have actively sought work within the past four weeks.
According to the BLS, those with temporary, part-time, or full-time jobs are considered employed, as are those who perform at least 15 hours of unpaid family work. The unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted to account for predictable variations, such as extra hiring during the holidays. The BLS also provides the unadjusted rate.
The Gold Standard And The Spreading Of Global Depression
The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression. Even countries that did not face bank failures and a monetary contraction first hand were forced to join the deflationary policy since higher interest rates in countries that performed a deflationary policy led to a gold outflow in countries with lower interest rates. Under the gold standard’s pricespecie flow mechanism, countries that lost gold but nevertheless wanted to maintain the gold standard had to permit their money supply to decrease and the domestic price level to decline .
There is also consensus that protectionist policies, and primarily the passage of the SmootHawley Tariff Act, helped to exacerbate, or even cause the Great Depression.
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Is A Lack Of Access To Child Care
WHAT MATTERSYou’ve written about how lack of child care during Covid and start-stop returns to public schools has affected both companies who want to bring workers back and workers who can’t figure out where to put their kids. Is that a large enough issue to affect the labor market?TAPPE:because of child care obligations at homedaycares and schools are not fully back up
Why Is There Such A Big Gap In The Data
The first thing to understand is how each figure is derived. The 10.1 million unemployed data point comes from a survey of 60,000 households the Census Bureau collects each month. All the adults in the household are asked a series of questions about whether they are employed full or part time, if they are looking for work or if they have given up and stopped looking for a job. To be considered officially unemployed, someone must have searched for a job within the past month.
In normal times, this monthly survey works pretty well, but these are not normal times. Response rates to this survey have fallen during the pandemic, and low-income families that have been hit hardest by the pandemic and job losses have been the least likely to respond, census researchers found.
Another unusual challengeof this pandemic is a lot of people arent sure if they are truly unemployed or just on an extended absence from work. The Labor Department has been open about a misclassification error in which some people who should have been marked as temporarily unemployed were instead classified as employed but absent from work for other reasons. This issue makes the unemployment figures look betterthan they are.
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The Hidden Costs Of Networking
I asked recruiters how given the multiple levels of bias and discrimination facing older LTU jobseekers they might advise someone to find a professional job? The answer was unanimous: Networking. While this conventional advice may have some merit, I also discovered during my research that for LTU workers, networking can have severe costs for their social and emotional well-being.
At first, the LTU jobseekers I interviewed had many former colleagues or other professional relationships with people they could contact. Most found reaching out to these people for referrals and introductions to be relatively easy.
But as the months wore on, this strategy became much more difficult. The same cloud of stigma that makes recruiters skeptical of LTU jobseekers also operates in the context of networking, in several ways.
Waukegan Illinois: Teneia Townsend 36 Massage Therapist
“On top of the stress from unemployment, I have a disabled 9-year-old child at home who’s been out of school. We were already in a very tough place trying to make ends meet, but to find out that I have to pay back all unemployment aid puts me and my child in a very difficult situation. This pandemic is hard already and this setback just makes it so much harder.”
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Canton Georgia: John Valentino 54 Business Owner
“I applied for the government small-business loan seven times. As of now I haven’t received a penny. Nothing. Just always ‘processing.’ It’s been an absolute nightmare. If you call the Department of Labor, it’s shut down. They just say, ‘We’re not taking calls right now.’ And you can’t leave a message. You can email them but you don’t get a response.”
How Do I Apply For Unemployment In The Us
- You must report unemployment benefits as income on your tax return.
- Workers who may not have qualified for UI benefits in the US now may be covered under new coronavirus unemployment benefit laws.
- You cannot file for unemployment benefits in the US for someone else.
Unemployment benefits in the US are something that many people can apply for. They are payments made by the government to people who are without a job because they lost it, they fell sick, they were injured or they experienced some other unforeseen circumstances that were no fault of their own, but resulted in them being without paid work.
While these things are not positive experiences, fortunately, applying for unemployment insurance is relatively easy to do.
Before giving out any other information, It is important to note that each state has its own UI program, and that you must find your state online in order to start your application. You can get started easily by searching for your state in the interactive map found at Careeronestops.org.
Once you have done this, you will be prompted to choose to file an unemployment insurance claim over the internet, or by telephone.
Be careful: you cannot file a UI claim for someone else, only for yourself.
What do you need to get started? Applicants are required to have some information on hand which often includes your Social Security Number, information about your employer, and your work history.
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Indianapolis Indiana: Latrell Smith 28 Daily Operations Manager
“It’s hard for me being in sports and entertainment, and seeing no end in sight. At first, like I said, I thought it would be a couple of weeks. We’re going on â what â five, six months? How long will sports not have fans? No concerts for another month? Six months? A year? Every day, you hear how many cases there are, or how cities and states are backtracking opening.”
Role Of Women And Household Economics
Women’s primary role was as housewives without a steady flow of family income, their work became much harder in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. Birthrates fell everywhere, as children were postponed until families could financially support them. The average birthrate for 14 major countries fell 12% from 19.3 births per thousand population in 1930, to 17.0 in 1935. In Canada, half of Roman Catholic women defied Church teachings and used contraception to postpone births.
Among the few women in the labor force, layoffs were less common in the white-collar jobs and they were typically found in light manufacturing work. However, there was a widespread demand to limit families to one paid job, so that wives might lose employment if their husband was employed. Across Britain, there was a tendency for married women to join the labor force, competing for part-time jobs especially.
In France, very slow population growth, especially in comparison to Germany continued to be a serious issue in the 1930s. Support for increasing welfare programs during the depression included a focus on women in the family. The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille that increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants.
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Figure : The Decrease Over The Latest Three
UK unemployment by duration , seasonally adjusted, between September to November 2016 and September to November 2021
The decrease in unemployment over the latest three-month period was driven by those who were unemployed for up to 12 months, with those unemployed for up to six months decreasing to slightly below pre-coronavirus levels. Those who were unemployed for between 6 and 12 months continued to decrease from the peak reached in early 2021. Long-term unemployment saw the second decrease over a three-month period since May to July 2020 .
Salt Lake City Utah: Faye Barnhurst 22 Concert
“We started to realize in the middle of March that we were going to have to shut down completely. It all escalated so fast. Shows and tours were getting canceled one after another, and venues were closing. By the time I applied for unemployment benefits, the extra $600 a week was no longer available. I was approved for $100 a week.”
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Extended Federal Unemployment Benefits In Ct To End Soon
However, jobless Connecticut residents will soon no longer qualify for federal extended unemployment benefits.
Officials with the state Department of Labor said Connecticut will drop out of the federal extended benefits program effective Jan. 8, because the state’s three-month average unemployment rate has now fallen below 6.5%, the threshold for continued payments.
Us Unemployment Applications Reach Over 26m As States Struggle To Keep Up
An additional 4.4 million Americans filed last week, as losses have wiped out all the job gains made since end of the last recession
An additional 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week adding to a total of over 26 million since the coronavirus pandemic shut down swaths of the US and brought its economy to a standstill.
The latest Department of Labor figures show the pace of layoffs appears to have slowed slightly but a backlog of claims mean millions more are likely to file in the coming weeks. States across the country are encountering problems with the sheer number of people applying for unemployment benefits.
In Florida, bedevilled by the widespread collapse of its already flawed benefits system, just 14.2% of the more than 668,000 claims filed since 15 March have been paid. In Ohio, claimants now have to file on a specific day of the week, depending on the first letter of their last name, to ease congestion. Washington residents are complaining that the states website crashes or takes hours to respond.
Latasha Johnson, 41, has been struggling to get by without a paycheck for a month. In mid-March, she was laid off from her job in dining services at the University of Illinois, where she was employed by the British-based multinational Compass.
She had no severance and it took a month for her to file an unemployment claim because the site was overwhelmed.
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Danville Kentucky: Reuben Harness 50 Business
“I wasn’t shocked at all. I was expecting it for quite some time, hoping and praying that it wouldn’t happen. But realistically I knew it was coming. When you go from full time to part time, you start to see red flags. I considered leaving before I was let go, but there aren’t a lot of jobs out there that were hiring for the type of work that I do. If something did pop up that I felt comfortable applying for, I would have.”
Chandler Arizona: Erik Rothchild 53 Business
“As a single father, it’s been very difficult since I lost my job. I’m an Army veteran and former business owner with a college degree who now can’t afford my bills or seem to find a job that I am qualified for. Now that the extra $600 is gone, the state provides me with $240 per week. Only one of my three kids is still at home now, but if I can’t find a decent job soon, I’m not sure if I will be able to keep my house. I am a survivor, but this has been tough.”
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Nashville Tennessee: Shauna Webb Scott 32 It Business Analyst
“I found out I was pregnant three weeks prior to losing my position as an IT business analyst. It’s been stressful dealing with pregnancy and losing my sense of purpose along the way. I also own a small business doing wedding coordination and planning, and lost most of my clients due to wedding cancellations. My biggest worry is that my business will never rebound, and I won’t be as marketable as a new mom and after having a large employment gap for nine months. I’ve lost income that I’ll never get back, and being pregnant has added to the stress and anxiety of trying to stay safe while job seeking.”
Los Angeles California: Kimberly Stephens 54 Entertainment
“With most productions being shut down and no live events in California, I do not have any job prospects. Still, I look for jobs every day on LinkedIn, classified ads, and other professional platforms. I’m getting by financially by the grace of God and unemployment, but there are still big sacrifices. I’ve cut back on groceries and utility usage. My daughter is applying for fall-winter 2021 admission for medical school, but she may not be able to enter this year because I can’t afford it. I’ve been a single parent all of her life and have supported her educational aspirations from private school to undergraduate and graduate school. I don’t want her to miss this opportunity or put it off to get a job to try to help me.”
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Anchorage Alaska: Elisa Hitchcock 58 Event Planner
“Work doesn’t faze me. I’ve been a fast-food cashier, a convenience-store clerk, and a professional log-cabin builder as an event planner, I folded napkins and set up tables. After my March 18 layoff, I knew the industry wouldn’t bounce back quickly. The whole point of an event is to bring folks together. You can’t do that if people are standing six feet apart. Right now I could probably get a supermarket job, filling curbside pickup orders. But I can’t risk exposure to COVID-19 because I might give it to my parents.”
Little Rock Arkansas: Stephanie Ravion 24 Healthcare Customer
“My job site closed down on March 24. Now I am struggling to take care of four children on $81 a week, which is virtually impossible. I have been searching for jobs in my field and trying to stay safe at the same time. I complete about 20 applications a week, and I only get maybe two or three responses back. My kids’ school shut down, and we are all at home in constant worry and paranoia. One of my kids has special needs and he doesn’t understand why he can’t go to school or has to wear a mask when we go out. Being a single parent is difficult, but living in this pandemic and uncertain times plagued with financial burden makes it so much worse. I wish the Democrats and Republicans would think about us, the little guys, while they are running off to vacation.”
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Fort Collins Colorado: Julia Bauer 47 Anthropologist
“We are a family of four and my income was really the only one coming in. We had a few months of savings, but we weren’t sure what we were going to do about money. We lived very frugally before this all hit, but we’ve cut out about 95% of the few extras we did allow ourselves. No new clothes â even when things wear out â and no meals out. We’ve banked every penny and only spend on absolute essentials. I’ve cut down on groceries. I’ve stopped going to the doctor and physical therapist, even though I have a chronic illness. I may just chuck it all, sell the house, and go back to grad school. If I’m going to lose the house anyway, I’d rather sell it first.”
Fargo North Dakota: Serena Dunn 24 Payroll And Office Coordinator
“I’m going to try to ride this out as long as possible. I want to go back to work for my employer and I’m comfortable going back, even if that means wearing masks and social distancing. I don’t have a plan if they don’t bring me back from furlough. Not knowing when this will end is hard, but I’m optimistic that everything will work out. I haven’t been impacted too negatively, and since I have no dependents, it’s easier for me to be confident that I’ll bounce back from this.”
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