Unemployment in September 2009

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.6 million to 15.1 million, and the unemployment rate has doubled to 9.8 percent.

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Unemployment rates for the major worker groups—adult men (10.3 percent), adult women (7.8 percent), teenagers (25.9 percent), whites (9.0 percent), blacks (15.4 percent), and Hispanics (12.7 percent)—showed little change in September. The rates for all major worker groups are much higher than at the start of the recession.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 603,000 to 10.4 million in September.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) rose by 450,000 to 5.4 million. In September, 35.6 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

These data are from the Current Population Survey and are seasonally adjusted. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — September 2009" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL 09-1180.