The employment rate continues to struggle out of the ditch. The
Employment Situation Survey which was released the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday showed a slight slip in December from November.
Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unem-ployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis- tics reported today. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.
The feeling across the nation still is fairly pessimistic, although I think people feel we are over the worst of it.
About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in December, an increase of 578,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not sea- sonally 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. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-13.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 929,000 discouraged workers in December, up from 642,000 a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally ad- justed.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work be- cause they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.6 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
