Yahoo! Finance
November 2, 2012
The latest snapshot of the U.S. labor market, as seen in the October employment report, underscores the current jobs crisis in America. The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9% from 7.8% in the prior month, and 171,000 payrolls were added to the workforce. While these are solid numbers compared to the depths of the last recession, the overall improvement is not nearly enough to put a dent in the real unemployment number that includes millions of uncounted Americans who have given up the search for a job.
While the headlines might make you think there aren’t any jobs to be had, quite the opposite is true. According to government data there are more than 3.6 million unfilled jobs across the country right now. This is the highest level of job vacancies in nearly four years, and if just half of those jobs were filled, the unemployment rate would fall to 6.5%.
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