Unemployment Rate High For Millions of First Time Job Seekers

Since April 2009, over a million first-time American job seekers have been looking for a job every month but there are no jobs out there for them.

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According to the latest monthly unemployment figures issued by the Bureau Of Labor Statistics (BLS), there are over 15 million Americans unemployed. However that number is a drastic under count of the actual amount of unemployed Americans. The reason for the under count is because the BLS simply doesn't count a worker that's unemployed as being unemployed if that worker has given up looking for a job or didn't look for a job four weeks prior to the monthly BLS unemployment survey. The actual and current unemployment rate in America is more than double the latest BLS figure of 9.8 percent. The highest unemployment rate at the height of the Great Depression during the 1930s was about 25 percent.

There is an upward trend in the amount of first-time workers entering the American work force every month. Currently there are over 1.2 million new entrants entering the American workforce every month who can't find jobs (see above chart). At the same time, the amount of American workers who voluntarily left their jobs and are actively engaged in looking for new jobs has flat-lined at about the 800,000 level. In other words, there are currently 400,000 more first-time job seekers competing with voluntary job-leavers every month for jobs and the amount of first-time job-seekers is steadily rising.

Economists disagree on what constitutes a "full employment level". But a ball-park figure for "full-employment" is in the 5 percent range. For America to achieve "full employment" within the next six years will require the creation of about a half million new jobs every month if present unemployment trends continue.