Update at 8:35 a.m. ET:The news is out. The jobless rate rose to 9.8% in November from October and only 39,000 jobs were added to "nonfarm" payrolls last month. More here.
Our original post:
Good morning.
The news that's sure to get lots of attention as the day gets going is the November employment/unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It's due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. You'll be able to see BLS' report here, and we'll put up a new post as quickly as possible. Most of the forecasts about what BLS will say, such as this one from Bloomberg News, are for a 150,000-or-so gain in jobs. That wouldn't be enough to bring down the nation's unemployment rate.
A few reminders of where things stand:
-- The October unemployment rate (which might be revised today) was 9.6%.
-- In October, businesses added 159,000 jobs to their payrolls (another figure that might be revised today).
-- The ranks of the "long-term unemployed," remain high. In October, 6.2 million people had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer; up from 5.6 million a year earlier.
-- As USA TODAY reported Thursday, "not since the early 1980s has the nation's unemployment rate been so grim for so long." If today's report shows the jobless rate stayed around 9.6%, it would be "the 19th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was above 9%. That breaks the post-World War II record set in the 1980s recession."
On Morning Edition today, NPR's Yuki Noguchi reported about the long-term unemployed and the battle in Congress extending their jobless benefits:
Meanwhile, a question for the group:
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