Painful Reality about Jobs
From the AFL-CIO
Despite the media’s touting of 312,000 new jobs last month, the painful reality is that working people are still being left behind in an economy rigged to enrich a handful of elites. Even as wages continue to stagnate, unemployment rises and retirement plans teeter, corporate executives are still happily pocketing fistfuls of money for themselves.
Here are a few key takeaways from the December jobs report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
- The overall unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9%.
- The unemployment rate among black workers jumped from 6% to 6.6% and rose among all workers without a college degree.
- The total number of unemployed workers increased by 276,000 to 6.3 million.
- Wage growth continued to fall below the minimum level needed for workers to begin reaping the benefits of economic growth.
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