September 08, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Unemployment in August 2008

The number of unemployed persons rose by 592,000 to 9.4 million in August, and the unemployment rate increased by 0.4 percentage point to 6.1 percent. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.4 percentage points, with most of the increase occurring over the past 4 months.

[Chart data—TXT]

In August, the unemployment rates for adult men, adult women, whites, blacks, and Hispanics rose, while the jobless rate for teenagers was little changed.

In August, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 163,000 to 1.8 million, an increase of 589,000 over the past 12 months. The newly unemployed—those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks—increased by 400,000 over the month.

These data are from the Current Population Survey program and are seasonally adjusted. More information can be found in "The Employment Situation: August 2008," (HTML) (PDF) news release USDL 08-1252.