–Admin ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Number of Long-Term Unemployed

By Heather Scott

WASHINGTON (MNI) – The December jobs report had some encouraging
news but unemployment measures are far above pre-recession levels and
the Obama administration remains “deeply concerned” about the number of
workers unemployed for extended periods, a U.S. Treasury official said
Friday.

The report, which showed a better-than-expected 200,000 increase in
non-farm payrolls and a slight decline in the unemployment rate to 8.5%
from 8.7%, “confirmed the recovery continued to strengthen in the second
half of 2011,” said Jan Eberly, Treasury’s assistant secretary for
economic policy.

But Eberly stressed that the administration is not satisfied, and
repeated the call to extend the payroll tax cut for the full year,
rather than just two months, to continued to provide needed stimulus.

“While today’s labor market report is encouraging and shows some
improvement, the recovery in the labor market is clearly far from
complete” with 13.1 million people still out of work, and another 10.6
million “underemployed in some way,” Eberly told reporters at a briefing
hours after the Labor Department released its latest report.

“The administration is also deeply concerned about the large share
of unemployed workers who have been out of work for an extended period
of time,” she said.

While the level of unemployed for more than six months has come
down from its peak of 46% in 2010 “it’s still highly elevated at more
than 42%,” equivalent to 5.6 million workers.

Among the good news: the economy has added private sector jobs for
22 consecutive months, and recovered 36% of the jobs lost from January
2008 to February 2010, she said.

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.5%, the lowest since February
2009, and the “vast majority” of the change, about 80%, was the result
of job growth rather than workers leaving the labor force, Eberly said.

The broader measures of unemployment also improved: U4, which
includes discouraged workers, has declined steadily since August
and dropped six-tenths to 9.1% in December, while the broadest measure,
U6, fell four-tenths to 15.2%, she said.

However, those measures remain above their pre-recession levels, she
said: U6 was 8.25%.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **

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