Unemployment in November 2010

In November, the unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent; it was 9.6 percent in each of the prior 3 months. The number of unemployed persons was 15.1 million.

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Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.0 percent), adult women (8.4 percent), whites (8.9 percent), and Hispanics (13.2 percent) edged up in November. The jobless rate for blacks (16.0 percent) showed little change over the month, while the rate for teenagers declined to 24.6 percent. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 390,000 to 9.5 million in November. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 6.3 million and accounted for 41.9 percent of the unemployed.

In November, about 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.3 million a year earlier, not seasonally adjusted. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.3 million discouraged workers in November, an increase of 421,000 from a year earlier, not seasonally adjusted. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — November 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-10-1662.