Unemployment rate at 9.0 percent in April 2011

May 10, 2011

The unemployment rate edged up from 8.8 to 9.0 percent over the month of April 2011, but was 0.8-percentage points lower than in November 2010. The number of unemployed persons, at 13.7 million, changed little.

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The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks increased by 242,000 to 2.7 million, and their share of total unemployment increased from 18.2 to 20.0 percent. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 283,000 to 5.8 million; their share of unemployment declined from 45.5 to 43.4 percent.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.8 percent), adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (16.1 percent), and Hispanics (11.8 percent) showed little change in April.

The civilian labor force participation rate was 64.2 percent for the fourth consecutive month. The employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little in April.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation – April 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-0622.