Jobless Rate in US Climbs to 9.7 Percent

Due to the economy collapse and financial crisis the unemployment rate has jumped to 9.7% in August that is the highest figure in the history of the US since 1983. It reflects the poor job market and points at instability of economy. Getting high rate of unemployment indicates that it is hard for the market and financial crunch to get over and hard for the economy to begin a sustained recovery.

While the jobless rate rose more than expected, the economy shed a net total of 216,000 jobs, less than July’s revised 276,000 and the fewest monthly losses in a year, according to U.S. Labor Department data released Friday. Economists expected the unemployment rate to rise to 9.5% from July’s 9.4% and job reductions to total 225,000. By contrast, in a healthy economy, employers need to add around 125,000 jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate stable.

“It’s good to see the rate of job losses slow down,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight. But “we’re still on track here to hit 10%” unemployment “before we’re done.”

The rise in the jobless rate was largely because of the government finding that the number of unemployed Americans jumped by nearly 500,000 to 14.9 million, while 73,000 people joined the civilian labor force. Those figures are from a different survey than the report on total job cuts.