Unemployment and demographics in June 2009

The unemployment rate, 9.5 percent, was little changed in June. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points.

[Chart data—TXT]

In June, unemployment rates for the major worker groups—adult men (10.0 percent), adult women (7.6 percent), teenagers (24.0 percent), whites (8.7 percent), blacks (14.7 percent), and Hispanics (12.2 percent)—showed little change from May 2009.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs (9.6 million) was little changed in June after increasing by an average of 615,000 per month during the first 5 months of this year.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million. In June, 3 in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

These data are from the Current Population Survey and are seasonally adjusted. More information can be found in "The Employment Situation: June 2009" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 09-0742.