Unemployment Rate Holds At 9.6% In October

The private sector added jobs for the tenth consecutive month, but not enough to bring down the nation’s total jobless rate, according to data released on Friday by the Department of Labor.

In October, 151,000 jobs were added, bringing the number of jobs added since December of 2009 to 874,000. Still, 14.8 million Americans remained out of work, 6.2 million of them having been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. In addition, there were 1.2 million Americans who gave up looking for work in October because they felt that no jobs were available to them.

Before he embarked on a ten day trip to India and Asia, President Barack Obama made brief remarks at the White House, calling the news “encouraging.”

“We’ve now seen private-sector job growth for 10 straight months. That means that since January, the private sector has added 1.1 million jobs,” Obama said. “Now, that’s not good enough…and I won’t be satisfied until everybody who is looking for a job can find one.”

“I am open to any idea, any proposal, any way we can get the economy growing faster so that people who need work can find it faster,” he added.