Tagged: Unemployment Rate

Part of a series

As 2011 was winding down, consumer spirits were starting to rise. Now the momentum has carried into the new year, with polls showing consumer sentiment continuing to improve.

Economists say that negative factors, such as falling home values or rising meat prices, are nowhere near as important as the growth in jobs.

"People pay close attention to the jobless rate," said Carroll Doherty, an associate director at the Pew Research Center. "That's a number that matters to people, especially the trajectory."

After years of speculation on a "jobless recovery," finally, things could be looking up–at least for the moment. This week, the Bureau of Labor statistics reported some serious gains on the national jobs front for January, with the creation of 243,000 jobs.

Millions of Americans wake up each morning without a job, even though they desperately want to work. It's one of the depressing legacies of the financial crisis and Great Recession.

NPR and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll of people who had been unemployed or with an insufficient level of work for more than a year. The results document the financial, emotional and physical effects of long-term unemployment and underemployment.

The federal government currently counts 5.7 million Americans as long-term unemployed, which it defines as people out of work for 27 weeks or more. The NPR/Kaiser poll used a slightly different measure, surveying people out of work for a year or more.

The nation's unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in November from 9 percent in October as payrolls went up by 120,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

While the jobless rate is now the lowest it's been since March 2009, economists say one reason it fell isn't good news — the size of the labor force shrank by 315,000 as more people stopped looking for work because they're discouraged about the chances of finding a job. Also tempering the enthusiasm about today's news: 120,000 new jobs on payrolls is still considered to be weak growth.

We'll be updating this post with more from the report.

Update at 10:15 a.m. ET. White House, Republican Reactions.