Employers added 80,000 jobs in October according to the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, and the nation’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1%. Since April of this year, unemployment has remained essentially unchanged between 9% and 9.2%.
Employers have added an average of 72,000 jobs per month over that time. The Federal Reserve estimates that more than 110,000 jobs a month are needed for labor market growth to outpace population growth and decrease the unemployment rate.
By this point in the recovery following the 1981-82 recession, unemployment had fallen from 10.8% to 7.2%, a 3.6 point drop. Today’s 9% unemployment rate is only .4 point lower than the 9.4% rate we had when the recovery began in July 2009.
