The business cycle always has an ebb-and-flow to it. The unemployment rises quickly during the onset of recessions and jobs are added back at a fraction of the pace from which they were taken away.

If you look at the jobless rate during the last 40 years, there were 6 distinct cycles of increases in the jobless rate and the related improvement in the economy. (1969 to 1973, 1973 to 1979, 1979 to 1989, 1989 to 2000, 2000 to 2007 and 2007 to the present (October 2009).

As you can see below the current Great Recession (Green Line) has taken unemployment to the highest point since the 1980's and it has done so at a faster pace.


Click on Images for a larger image


If you just want to concentrate on the change in the unemployment rate, you can see that this recession (Green Line) has risen from the trough at the fastest rate we have seen.

If this recession is going to have the duration of hard-times seen in the 1980's the peak unemployment rate won't happen for another 11 months (September 2010)... And worse yet, you can see from the chart that it usually takes 5 - 6 YEARS before enough jobs are created to bring the unemployment rate back down to pre-recession levels.
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10% Unemployment is worse than what it used to be

Yahoo News has an interesting story about how this month's 10% jobless rate is worse than what it was in the 1980's during the last time America saw a 10% unemployment rate.

1. Americans are carrying a lot more debt.
2. People are taking at least 10 more weeks on average to look for work.
3. Fewer people have health insurance

Jobless Rate at 10.2%; Broader unemployment at 17.5%

Hat tip on the Chart to Jake at econopicdata

The jobless rate for October 2009 spiked to 10.2% and if you include the underemployed, it jumped to 17.5%---That's almost 1 out of every 5 workers is looking for a better job.

The average work week remained at a low of 33 hours a week (Usually employers will start increasing hours worked, before they start hiring new employees)...

Florida's Jobless Rate Spikes to 11%

According to the Jacksonville Observer, the unemployment rate in Florida has now breached the 11% mark.

It is the highest unemployment rate for the sunshine state since 1975, and it's up over 4 percentage points in the one year since September 2008.

Fort Walton Beach, Gainesville and Tallahassee – regions known for government, education and military employment – had the lowest unemployment rates, all less than 7.5 percent.

U6 Unemployment Tops 17%

This morning the Bureau of Economic Analysis put out data concerning the unemployment rate for the United States during September 2009. The reported unemployment rate climbed to 9.8% in the most recent month, and the broader total unemployment (aka the U6 Unemployment) climbed to 17%--this figure includes people who are working part time for economic reasons.

EconomPicData does a great job of plotting all types of economic data and today I'm pulling a nice chart that he created that shows just how tightly correlated the Unemployment rate and the U-6 Unemployment rate are.Another disturbing trend that EconomPicData picks up on is the fact that the number of hours worked per week times the # of people employed divided by the population (essentially the number of hours per week worked per capital). And what is disturbing is that it is at a multi-decade low and still dropping; additionally, before companies start hiring new workers they usually start increasing the number of hours worked by their existing work-force.