Saints Preserve Us, The Labor Numbers Are Out

My Irish grandmother used to say, "Saints preserve us" when something went wrong. I haven't heard that saying in years but as soon as I heard the labor numbers this morning, it popped into my head.  The statistics are bad, frustrating and just aren't improving.

The job report is terrible and frankly, people should consider themselves lucky if they have a job. The Labor Participation Rate (people actively looking for work) is the highest it has been since May of 1979 (the Carter administration days) at 63.3% So even if the unemployment rate is 7.6%, this means that people dropped out of the hunt.

On top of that, 11.7 million people are unemployed and 21.6 million people are underemployed.  Underemployed mean that people are taking jobs that are beneath their abilities but are taking them anyway because they need to make ends meet.  I know people like this and I'll bet you do too.

These numbers make something that I heard yesterday make sense.  I read that the weekly claims report is the highest it has been since November with 385, 000 claims reported last week. There are 5.3 unemployed Americans and 3.2 unemployed people for every job opening.

I gave a Networking class this past Wednesday night and when  asked the room who was unemployed everyone but one person raised their hands. Saints preserve us.