Jobless rate little comfort to some

The lowest U.S. jobless rate in three years hasn’t changed the long-term picture for millions of Americans.

Bloomberg News

Published: 02/07/12 12:05 am

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The lowest U.S. jobless rate in three years hasn’t changed the long-term picture for millions of Americans.

About 5.5 million haven’t worked for 27 weeks or more and are still looking – making up 42.9 percent of the total unemployed pool. Another 2.8 million are too discouraged to actively look for work in recent weeks or have other reasons for not wanting to be in the labor force, according to non-seasonally adjusted data released Feb. 3 by the Labor Department.

“The labor market is still worse than the official unemployment rate would suggest,” said Henry Mo, an economist at Credit Suisse Group in New York.

Unemployment fell to 8.3 percent in January; payrolls increased by 243,000.

Long-term unemployment is a focus of attention among Federal Reserve officials, who last month said they would keep borrowing costs low.

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