Stagnant Unemployment

By Sean Stillmaker in News on Jul 3, 2010 4:00PM

The U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to 9.5 percent despite 125,000 jobs being cut in June, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The private sector added 83,000 jobs, the sixth straight month of gains, but there was a loss of 225,000 from the temporary census jobs. However, not accounted for are the 652,000 people who abandoned job searches or those that have been on unemployment for over six months. So, according to the Tribune:

All told, 14.6 million people were unemployed in June. An additional 11.2 million have given up their job searches or are working part-time but would prefer full-time work. That adds up to nearly 26 million Americans, and an "underemployment" rate of 16.5 percent.

A slow recovery seems to be the outlook. Unemployment is expected to stay above 9 percent through the November elections and could still be as high as 7.5 percent two years from now.