By FITSNews || A surge of temporary hiring for the U.S. Census kept America’s unemployment rate holding at 9.7 percent for the third straight month, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. Meanwhile, the nation’s “underemployment” rate – which includes people who are so depressed with the job market that they’ve given up searching for work – inched upward from 16.8 to 16.9 percent.
All told, fifteen million Americans are currently out-of-work, including 8 million who have lost their jobs since the beginning of the current economic recession in December 2007.
South Carolina’s unemployment rate – the fourth-highest in the nation – has held at 12.5 percent (a record high) for the past three months as well, although March numbers will not be released for several weeks.
Over 114,000 South Carolinians have lost their jobs since the beginning of the “Great Recession” in December 2007, although government has added positions over that time period. In fact, over 6,000 government jobs have been added in the last year alone.
Christina Romer, the chairwoman of President Barack Obama’s Council on Economic Advisers, told National Public Radio on Friday that fears of a “double-dip” recession were over, adding that “we’re in pretty good shape.”
Of course, government told us eight months ago that the recession was “over.”
WEB EXTRA
March 2010 Unemployment Data (US Department of Labor)
By Rick April 2, 2010 at 1:45 pm
K-chunk, K-chunk goes the printing press…all is ok, we have all kinds of money to keep paying unemployment…at least until November(elections suck for the party in control during 10% unemployment). It’ll all be alright, Big Daddy is working on job creation, or will be after he handles the problem of 20 million illegals….oh right, that’ll mean millions of jobs that are already filled by low skilled labor. Must suck to be Bush lite….