The Employment Landscape In 2010: Growth & Decline
Employment in 2010 had some substantial ups and downs, including a loss of more than 200,000 government jobs. Meanwhile, jobs in the private sector grew substantially, though not enough to bring down the unemployment rate.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: NPR
In January 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.7 percent. If you had asked most people then to look forward to the end of the year, few would have guessed the rate would be even higher now.
But it is. Today, the number of people out of work is a little more than 15 million.
Yet the economy did start creating jobs again this year. Many economists believe next year the unemployment rate will drop to around 9 percent, or about double what it was before the recession began.
'Standing Still Isn't All That Great'
Each month, the labor department releases new data about the nation's employment situation. That includes the unemployment rate and whether the number of jobs on payrolls went up or down.
On average, the private sector created 100,000 jobs a month this year. But as President Obama said, almost every month: It wasn't nearly good enough.
"As I've said before, the only piece of economic news that people still looking for work want to hear is, 'You're hired,' " Obama said.
Cliff Zukin, a professor of public policy at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, describes the labor market in 2010 as "dismal, and pathetic and dire."
"The job creation compared to the amount of people out of work, is a drop in the bucket," he says.
There were about 1 million jobs created — but the unemployment rate rose