The Labor Department brings good economic news this Friday with reports that the unemployment rate has finally dropped a bit to 9 percent. However, its monthly report shares disappointing news that the American employment sector only added 80,000 jobs in October.
Lacking Jobs Present Continued Unemployment
While increasing job opportunity in any month is better than losing them, word that a mere 80,000 new positions were added in October was somewhat dismal news for struggling Americans. In addition to the lower number of job developed compared to September’s 158,000 jobs count, experts say it takes at least 150,000 jobs added each month just to keep up with population growth.
Since insufficient job opportunities were created, roughly 13.9 million Americans were still unemployed in October. Further, another 2.6 million were considered “marginally attached” to the workforce, meaning these unemployed individuals wanted and were available for work, searched for employment sometime in the last year, but were not counted in unemployment figures, because they did not demonstrate actively searching for a job in October.
Another Jobs Bill Block in Congress
Congress has been working on a plan to help create jobs next year, but have had a difficult time agreeing to specifics. As a result, multiple jobs bills have been blocked, including another piece of President Barack Obama’s jobs bill yesterday.
Senate members blocked a $60 billion infrastructure plan from advancing that some lawmakers say would have put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work rebuilding runways, roads and railroad tracks. Republicans were said to have strongly opposed the bill because Democrats proposed to pay for it by adding a 0.7 percent surcharge on income of more than $1 million.
Most of the disputes between lawmakers in relation to the jobs bill have come down to taxes. Democrats are interested in increasing taxes, mostly for the wealthy, while Republicans would prefer to keep taxes low and instead cut government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
To combat Republicans’ original opposition to his $447 jobs plan, Obama has been trying to pass his bill piece by piece, but so far all of efforts have been dead-stopped. At the same time, Republicans’ own attempts to pass jobs plans have been halted as well.
In October, a report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) said millions of unemployed citizens could lose their unemployment benefits in 2012 if lawmakers don’t come to an agreement on a jobs bill soon. Some have predicted that the fight could go on for a while as lawmakers prepare to debate for the 2012 elections.
