A Hint of Good Job Market News

Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured the current unemployment rate at 9.8%, which to everyone's dismay, is the highest since April 2010. But a recent data released by Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey suggests that the October job openings exceeded by 400,000 compared to September numbers. October had 3.4 million job openings compared to 3 million in September. Most of the job openings have been in the service, education, and health service industries. The article also states that ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was the lowest since 2009, indicating that more and more unemployed workers have started looking for jobs more aggressively.

Why the Jobless Gender Gap Exists

The latest unemployment report shows that the women continue to maintain a more stable unemployment rate than men. As the economy recovers, they may continue to dominate.

It's no secret that women fared better than men during the latest recession. More men found themselves unemployed than women as male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing shed far more jobs than areas like education and health care, which typically employ more women.

And as the latest jobless report released today shows, the unemployment gender gap continues through the economic recovery. Though it has narrowed some since its peak in August 2009, the gap persists -- unemployment among men hovers near 10% versus 8% for women.

The overall jobless rate for September was unchanged from August at 9.6%, underscoring concerns from some Federal Reserve policymakers that the economic rebound has been moving much too slow and may need an extra jolt through easier monetary policy. The economy lost 95,000 non-farm jobs, driven mostly by layoffs in local governments and of temporary Census workers.

The financial strains of the so-called "Mancession" have pushed more women who previously took time off from their careers to search for jobs. It's a development that's been hard for economists to quantify, but recent studies and anecdotes offer a snapshot.

In Europe, a Mood of Austerity and Anxiety

According to Wikipedia: "Austerity is a policy of deficit-cutting, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. Austerity policies are often used by governments to reduce their deficit spending while sometimes coupled with increases in taxes to pay back creditors to reduce debt."

Soon enough such could be the scenario of a European nation, Greece, and the European Union eventually. The European Commission in its statement affirmed that the European Union’s economic growth rate has slowed down with unemployment rate fixed at 10 percent in the last few months. While some individuals in Europe view the current economic situation as an opportunity for innovation, most of the Europeans fear of the high unemployment rate and the difficulty that they would have to face to make ends meet when their savings run out.

Unemployment increases...but so does the demand for labor?

It seems that everyone has noticed that unemployment has been on the rise. As the month of August came to an end, instead of going down with the increase in jobs unemployment rose by .1 percent. The writer describes this phenomenon to be caused by "the continued draw-down in temporary census employment." This set back erased more than 100 thousand jobs from the labor market report of august. Also the write reports that despite the increase in unemployment in august, private employment saw a relatively large growth. Private employment as been seeing growth since December of 2009. The writer states that our economy is producing enough jobs to rapidly bring down the unemployment rate, but instead it went up. He believes that "at this point of the business cycle, labor force growth in a positive sign. I agree, a growth in the business cycle is good for our economy and will help slow down the upward movement of the unemployment rate. There is growth in the labor market, but is it fast enough to combat the steadily increasing unemployment rate?