Unemployment Rises to 9.6%

September 4th, 2010 Brock Hailes Leave a comment Go to comments

The U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent after the economy shed jobs for the third straight month. Dropping 54,000 non-farm jobs, the losses were not great, but not as bad as economists originally predicted.

Job Losses Not So Bad

Despite the fact that the economy lost a lot of jobs in August, economists saw a grimmer future. Last month, they had predicted we would lose about 110,000, according to a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

According to the report, the real losses came from cutbacks in the government as more temporary workers were let go who were hired for the 2010 census. In the private sector, 67,000 jobs were added, but this was not enough to offset the losses.

Policymakers Need to Take Action

With unemployment remaining points within the peak of 10.2 percent that was reached in March 2009, it’s no wonder people are looking for policymakers to take more immediate action to get the economy up and running. Federal subsidies like COBRA and other programs are slowly falling away, yet many people are still unemployed and looking for ways to support their families.

Experts are expecting discussions to spark about what the Federal Reserve and Congress need to do to jump start the economy over the long Labor Day weekend. President Barack Obama will be speaking at the Milwaukee Laborfest this Monday about his new ideas to promote job growth, something he has been pushing Congress to support for some time.

The down economy has resulted in a few benefits, including record-low mortgage rates (the most recent low is 4.32 percent), but because so many are still unemployed and struggling financially, sure-fire ways to jump start the economy are impossible to take advantage of.

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