December 5, 2011 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Unemployment rate falls to 8.6 percent in November 2011
In November, the unemployment rate declined by 0.4 percentage point to 8.6 percent. From April through October, the rate held in a narrow range from 9.0 to 9.2 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 13.3 million, was down by 594,000.
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In November, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs declined by 432,000 to 7.6 million. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.7 million and accounted for 43.0 percent of the unemployed.
The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 64.0 percent in November. The employment-population ratio, at 58.5 percent, changed little.
From October to November, the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) dropped by 378,000 over the month to 8.5 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a fulltime job.
These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — November 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-1691.
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