America's Employment Outlook

Archive Report

Current Labor Market

High Unemployment Linked to Recession

At a recent afl-cio conference in washington, D.C., former Vice President Walter F. Mondale stated that the three biggest issues facing Americans today were “jobs, jobs and jobs.” Later the same day, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., told the unionists that the most important issues facing Americans were “jobs, jobs and more jobs.”1 This rhetorical replay may have been amusing, but there is nothing funny about the current employment situation in the United States. As the recession drags on, unemployment has reached a post-Depression high. The April unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, as measured by the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, was the highest since 1941. Not since 1938 have as many as 10.3 million job-seekers been ...

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