Unemployment
rates in August rose in 26 American states from July, the Labor Department said
Friday, the latest evidence that hiring remains tepid.
Nationwide,
employers added only 96,000 jobs in August. That's below July's gain of 141,000
and the average of 226,000 jobs a month added in the January-March
quarter.
The U.S.
unemployment rate fell to 8.1% last month from 8.3% in July. But that was only
because many people gave up looking for work. The government only counts people
as unemployed if they are actively searching for jobs.
The rate in
Michigan rose to 9.4% from 9%. The rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 12.1% in
Nevada, which has the highest unemployment in the nation. GOP nominee Mitt
Romney campaigned in Nevada on Friday.
Unemployment
rates also rose in five other battleground states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
North Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa.
Unemployment was
flat in three closely contested states rich in electoral votes: Florida,
Virginia and Ohio.
The rate in
Florida held steady at 8.8%. Ohio's rate stayed at 7.2%, and unemployment in
Virginia was unchanged at 5.9%. Both rates also stayed well below the national
average, as did the rates in Iowa (5.5%), New Hampshire (5.7%) and Wisconsin
(7.5%). Detroit Free Press
U.S. households
saw incomes shrink for a second straight year in 2011 as the economy struggles
to recover from the Great Recession, according to a Census Bureau report
released Thursday, Sept, 20. The income of
the typical U.S. family fell or was flat in almost every state last year, with
the drop particularly steep in places where the economy has been hit hard by the
housing bust. The median
annual household income-the point on the income scale at which half earn more
and half earn less-fell in 18 states in 2011 from a year earlier after adjusting
for inflation. Nationally, the
median income dropped by 1.3% to $50,502 in 2011. A separate report last week
reported a slightly different median income level, but either way, the number is
at a level last seen in the mid-1990s, continuing a long period of stagnant or
falling wages since an all-time peak in 1999. The latest
Census report shows that despite 2011's marking the second full year of the
recovery, poverty continued to rise in many regions. An estimated
335,760 people fell into poverty in California alone last year, pushing up the
state's poverty rate to 16.6%. Poverty is defined as an annual income of $23,021
or lower for a family of four. WSJ
AHT/HJ
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