Jobless, Unemployment Rate | featured news

An increase in hiring helped lower unemployment rates in 37 U.S. states last month, the latest indication that the job market is slowly healing.

In the wake of the controversial 7.8% unemployment rate reported by the U.S. Labor Department earlier this month, Gallup today said that its nonseasonally adjusted rate fell from 7.9% at the end of September to 7.3% in mid-October. That is a new low since Gallup began collecting employment data in January 2010.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month, dropping below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years and giving President Barack Obama a potential boost with the election a month away.

While the unemployment rate dipped to 9 percent, the improvement was seen as mediocre.

Unemployment rates rose in more than half of U.S. states in June, evidence that slower hiring is affecting many parts of the country.

Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.

California's unemployment rate ticked down to 11.9% in April after the state added 8,900 jobs, a relatively small number in a state still suffering from the Great Recession.

The unemployment rate rose in 20 states last month as employers in most states shed jobs....

The state is borrowing $40 million a day from the federal government to provide assistance to jobless workers, but has resisted changing the formulas it uses to determine and fund those benefits.California's fund for paying unemployment insurance is broke.

The state, which has the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, lost 63,500 jobs in September. In Los Angeles County, the unemployment rate was 12.6%, up from 12.2% a year ago. California's economy continued to suffer in September as employers cut jobs from payrolls and the state's unemployment rate remained steady at 12.4%.