Unemployment Rate Hits 9.7% Under Barack Obama … Highest Rate Since 1983

The unemployment rate in the US hits 9.7%. The the jobless rate rose more than expected as unemployment gets closer and closer to 10%.

U.S. job losses softened last month but the unemployment rate soared to its highest level since June 1983, proving that it will take some time for the ailing labor market to recover from the worst financial crisis in decades.

Nonfarm payrolls declined 216,000 last month compared to a revised 276,000 drop in July, the Labor Department said Friday. The August drop is smaller than the 233,000 decline economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey had expected.

From Fox News:

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate reached 16.8 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

A great job that stimulus package has done Barack Obama. A 26 year high despite all the rosy comments from VP Joe Biden that the stimulus is working. Yea Joe, it looks like that stimulus is really working as unemployment nears 10%.

Vice President Joe Biden says the $787 billion economy stimulus “is in fact working” despite public skepticism and continuing criticism.

Biden gave an upbeat assessment of the massive package’s results on Thursday, 200 days after it was signed. Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Biden said the stimulus is “changing the trajectory of our economy.”

UPDATE I: Teenage unemployment rate is at 25.5 percent

Pity the unemployed, but especially pity the teenage unemployed.

According to today’s job report, the overall unemployment rate (the percentage of people in the labor force not working but looking for work) in August rose to 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.