US boost as number out of work falls

The US unemployment rate fell last month to its lowest level in more than two and a half years. More Americans out of work either found jobs or gave up looking and were no longer counted as unemployed.

The US government said yesterday that the unemployment rate dropped sharply to 8.6 per cent, down from 9 per cent in October. The rate hasn’t been that low since March 2009, during the depths of the recession. About 13.3 million Americans remain unemployed.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month. And the previous two months were revised up to show that 72,000 more jobs added – the fourth straight month that the US government has revised prior months higher.

However, the US economy is not close to replacing the jobs lost in the recession. Employers began shedding staff in February 2008 and cut nearly 8.7 million jobs over 25 months. Since then, the economy has regained nearly 2.5 million of those jobs.

The presidential election is less than a year away, which means Barack Obama will almost certainly face voters with the highest unemployment rate of any US president since the Second World War.

Private employers added a net gain of 140,000 jobs in November. But governments shed 20,000 jobs, mostly at the local and state level. Governments at all levels have shed nearly 500,000 jobs in the past year.