Envisioning Employment: Employment Situation May 2011

Today’s Employment Situation Report showed that in May, net nonfarm payrolls increased only slightly rising just 54,000 from April while private nonfarm payrolls added a just 83,000 and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.1% over the same period.

Net private sector jobs increased just 0.08% since last month climbing 1.61% above the level seen a year ago but but remained a whopping 5.79% below the peak level of employment seen in December 2007.

Full Time Workers Fully Under Pressure: May 2011

Today’s employment situation report showed that the full time unemployment rate increased to 9.7% of the civilian workforce remaining near the highest rate seen in 41 years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers full time workers to be those “who have expressed a desire to work full time (35 hours or more per week) or are on layoff from full-time jobs”.

Full time jobless workers currently account for roughly 88.5% of all unemployed workers.

Recovery-less Recovery: Unemployment Duration May 2011

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Today's employment situation report showed that conditions for the long term unemployed worsened in May while remaining epically distressed by historic standards.

Workers unemployed 27 weeks or more jumped to 6.2 million or 45.1% of all unemployed workers while the median number of weeks unemployed increased to 22.0 weeks and the average stay on unemployment surged to 39.7 weeks, a new high for the series.

Looking at the charts below (click for super interactive versions) you can see that today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression.