For Immediate Release: Friday, June 3, 2011
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Unemployment increases, recovery on pause

By EPI economist Heidi Shierholz

The current unemployment rate is 9.1%.  To remind us what a healthy unemployment rate looks like, 4 years ago, in May 2007, the unemployment rate stood at 4.4%, and 11 years ago, in May 2000, the unemployment rate was 4.0%.  The U.S. workforce needs the pace of job growth to accelerate dramatically in order to re-establish full employment within any reasonable timeframe, and instead, the recovery is on pause.