Labor Statistics

The painful slump endured by California's aerospace industry finally appears to be over after six long years. Companies are landing new contracts again, massive layoffs are fewer and farther between, and production is picking up. But the aerospace industry--the backbone of a prosperous state economy a decade ago--now operates in a sober new world where fundamental changes have occurred.

Unemployment rates dropped in 281 metro areas throughout the country in October, but many of the areas that performed best were in the Rust Belt, thanks to a manufacturing renaissance. The region with the largest decrease in the unemployment rate in the country was Muskegon-Norton Shores, Mich., which saw unemployment drop 2.6 percentage points from October 2010 to 9%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Flint and Jackson, Mich., saw significant drops of 2.5% each.

Janet L. Norwood, who has served as commissioner of labor statistics since 1979, will leave her post to join the Urban Institute at the end of this year. A spokeswoman at the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Norwood is leaving government to speak and write on labor market issues from the private sector.

The nation's job market took a sharp turn for the worse last month as employers abruptly curbed their hiring and the unemployment rate inched up -- grim evidence that the economic recovery was faltering. The new Labor Department report, which showed the unemployment rate rising to 9.1%, was bad news for millions of Americans seeking work and for the hundreds of thousands of newly minted college graduates whose prospects are increasingly uncertain. But beyond those looking for work, the downturn in hiring signaled continuing troubles for the rest of the nation: A weaker economy -- along with the increased risk of sliding into a new recession -- reduces the likelihood that personal income will rise or that families will better themselves financially in other ways.

More women than ever before now are holding jobs around the world, latest U.N. labor statistics show, and ironically more are also unemployed. In fact, in many countries unemployment grows faster among women than among men and decreases in women's unemployment are smaller than in men's. The proportion of women in the work force has increased in 21 industrialized and 13 developing nations, according to the new Yearbook of Labor Statistics issued by the International Labor Organization.

Janet L. Norwood, veteran U.S. commissioner of labor statistics, decried Washington's lack of leadership on economic problems Tuesday, saying that the country is being polarized by the growth of the most severe gap between the poorest and richest Americans that she has seen in 38 years of government service.

Although women have made significant gains in education and income during the last three decades, the pay gap between college-educated men and women persists, experts say. A new report to be released today by the American Assn. of University Women sheds light on what is holding many female graduates back -- and what they can do to catch up.

The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%. And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter -- the highest since early 1983 and more than double the rate for older college-educated workers.

President Bush has announced that he plans to nominate Marvin H. Kosters of Arlington, Va., an economist who worked in the Gerald R. Ford White House, to be commissioner of labor statistics at the Labor Department. If confirmed by the Senate, Kosters would succeed Janet L. Norwood.

The number of American women in management jobs nearly doubled during the 1980s, reflecting their rising status in the U.S. work force, a new Census report says. The Census figures being released today also illustrate the striking deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, with employment flat in blue-collar occupations, such as equipment operators, while expanding swiftly in technical and other white-collar fields.

Another sign that California's economic recovery is going slowly: The Golden State now boasts the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation. After months of ranking No. 3, California has swapped places with Michigan. California's 12.5% unemployment rate in December ranks only behind Nevada's 14.5% jobless rate, according to the latest rankings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday. Meanwhile, Michigan ended 2010 with a jobless rate of 11.7%. That's down from 14.5% in December 2009, when the industrial state was saddled with the worst unemployment in the country.

The number of women who are their families' sole breadwinners has risen, as has the number of unemployed fathers, according to Census Bureau data released Friday. The trend has been accelerated by the recession, but what's unclear is whether the shift will continue, said Kristin Smith, a family demographer at the University of New Hampshire. "Whether this trend is short-lived or is lasting will depend on how the economy comes out of the recession," she said. If the male-dominated jobs in manufacturing and construction industries don't pick up, the nation could see a continued reliance on women as the only wage earners for families, Smith said.

The U.S. economy ended the worst year of employment losses since the Great Depression with an unexpectedly large drop of 85,000 jobs in December -- dimming hopes of a quick upswing in hiring and intensifying Washington's partisan fight over how to create more opportunities for workers. The unemployment rate for the month was unchanged from November at 10%, the government said Friday, but that was only because droves of people, including many discouraged about the prospects of finding work, dropped out of the labor force and were no longer counted as unemployed.

The number of recently laid-off workers filing for unemployment benefits dropped unexpectedly last week to the lowest level since July 2008, sparking hope that the job market could be on the mend. Improved prospects for jobs could help spur consumer spending, a key factor for propelling an economy that has been struggling to pull itself out of the deep recession. New unemployment claims have been sliding steadily for months, but fell last week by 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 432,000, according to data from the U.S. Labor Department.

The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%. And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter -- the highest since early 1983 and more than double the rate for older college-educated workers.

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles -- After two long years of economic destruction that saw about 8 million American jobs disappear, the national payroll essentially stopped shrinking last month in an unexpected turn that raised hopes a labor market recovery might finally be at hand. Although most analysts had expected November's job losses to top 100,000, the Labor Department said Friday that employers shed just 11,000 jobs in November -- the smallest number lost since the recession began in December 2007.

There are more working women per capita in Minneapolis-St. Paul than in Los Angeles or New York. Nearly 71% of the women in Minneapolis-St. Paul worked for pay in 1999, according to a new report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By comparison, fewer than half of the women in New York held paying jobs. Among Los Angeles women, only 52.7% were employed. The national average for working women was 57.4%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in Washington that the rate of workplace injuries and illnesses increased 5% from 1986 to 1987, with 8.3 injuries and illnesses per 100 workers, up from 7.9 per 100 workers. The total number of injuries and illnesses in 1987 was 6.03 million, up from 5.63 million in 1986, the bureau said. Janet L. Norwood, commissioner of labor statistics, said the increase was mainly in mining, manufacturing, transportation and public utilities.

California lost more than five times as many jobs in September as it did the month before, signaling that the state's employment woes continue despite a budding economic recovery. Employers cut 39,300 workers from their payrolls last month, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department, led by cuts in construction and government. A separate survey of joblessness showed that California's unemployment rate was 12.2% in September, down from a revised 12.3% in August.