July 07, 2003 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Unemployment rate up in June

The number of unemployed persons increased by 360,000 in June to 9.4 million, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.4 percent. Since March, unemployment has increased by 913,000.

[Chart data—TXT]

The rate for adult men edged up for the third month in a row; at 6.1 percent, the jobless rate for this group was 0.8 percentage point higher than in March. The teenage unemployment rate, at 19.3 percent, has trended up since the beginning of the year. Over the month, the unemployment rate for blacks increased to 11.8 percent. Jobless rates for the other major worker groups—adult women (5.2 percent), whites (5.5 percent), and Hispanics (8.4 percent)—showed little change from May.

In June, there were 2.0 million unemployed persons who had been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, an increase of 410,000 over the year. They represented 21.4 percent of the total unemployed, up from 18.8 percent a year earlier.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. For more information on current unemployment, see "The Employment Situation: June 2003" (PDF) (TXT), USDL 03-253.