July 2009 Unemployment

Posted Friday, August 07 2009

July 2009 unemployment data was released this morning by the BLS and I've updated the site to reflect the new numbers. The national unemployment rate went from 9.5% in June to 9.4% in July which was a pleasant surprise. All levels of unemployment by education showed either improvement or flat month to month changes. Unemployment by race/ethnicity showed small improvements for Whites and Blacks but worsened a little bit for Hispanics and Asians. In the four unemployment age brackets I'm tracking there were small improvements in every group except the 45-54 set where the M/M rise in unemployment was a small 0.1 percentage points.

The broader measures of unemployment like U-5 and U-6 both improved modestly month over month. Also noteworthy is that the median period of unemployment declined by 2.2 weeks from June to July after a big jump the previous month.

All in all it seems like a positive report considering most were expecting the unemployment rate to increase by 0.1 percentage points.

Update: I updated some links since I moved the unemployment demographic data and unemployment duration data to their own pages.