2011 Jobs & Unemployment Summary, Facts, and Figures

LATEST Jobs Number Revisions for 2011 as of February 2013:

• 2,193,000* jobs in TOTAL have been ADDED in 2011.
• 2,420,000* private sector jobs have been ADDED.
• 317,000* government sector jobs have been LOST.

Summary for all of 2011 of February 2012:

• 1,840,000* jobs in TOTAL have been ADDED in 2011.
• 2,105,000* private sector jobs have been ADDED.
• 265,000* government sector jobs have been LOST.
• The unemployment rate FELL from 9.4% to 8.5%.
• The official alternate unemployment rate FELL from 16.6% to 15.2%.
• The civilian labor force (people working and people actively looking for work) increased by 274,000. 
• 1,570,000 MORE people reported themselves as employed.
• 1,296,000 FEWER people reported themselves as UNemployed.
• 833,000 FEWER people reported themselves as among the long-term unemployed
• 97,000 FEWER people claimed to "want a job" (but don't have one and have not looked for a job within the past month.) 

* These numbers have been revised since they were originally published.  Here are the original numbers:  Total jobs increased by 1,640,000.  Private jobs increased by 1,920,000.  Government jobs declined by 280,000.  Please note that revisions to jobs numbers occur frequently during the first two years after numbers are published, as "real" data from employers clarifies the initial survey data.  Also, minor revisions to jobs numbers are often made up to five to ten years after the initial numbers.

Promising numbers, but....

Total Jobs Numbers:

All of these numbers are very promising, considering the deep hole that the country was in three years ago.  However, we have a long way to go.  8,750,000 jobs were lost between early 2008 and early 2010, when we began adding jobs.  We've added 2,654,000 jobs in total* since that trough, but that means we have 6 million more jobs to add*, not counting jobs for people who have been added to the civilian workforce in the past four years.  We're still in that hole, and the climb out of that hole has been slow and difficult indeed.  

(Current numbers can always be found HERE.)

Private sector jobs numbers:

The private sector job toll has been a bit brighter, but still difficult:  We lost 8,838,000 private sector jobs in that same period, from January 2008 until January 2010.  We've added 3,156,000 since the trough.  We have about 5,700,000 private sector jobs to add, again, not counting jobs for people who have been added to the civilian workforce in the past four years. 

Government Sector Jobs Numbers:

Layoffs in the government sectors have added to employment difficulties:  Not counting hiring for Census 2010, government hiring (federal, state, and local sectors) actually peaked in April 2009.   We have lost 709,000 government sector jobs since that time, with declines in 18 of the last 19 months. 

The numbers for 2011 have all been extracted from the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Report.  The numbers from 2008 forward were all taken from data extracted on the BLS Databases and Tools page.  I publish many updates based on BLS data.  Current articles are indexed HERE.