Chart: Unemployment rate in U.S. since January 2008
Both the number of unemployed persons (11.6 million) and the unemployment rate (7.6 percent) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 4.1 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.7 percentage points.
The unemployment rate continued to trend upward in January for adult men (7.6 percent), adult women (6.2 percent), whites (6.9 percent), blacks (12.6 percent), and Hispanics (9.7 percent). The jobless rate for teenagers was unchanged at 20.8 percent.
Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased to 7.0 million in January. This measure has grown by 3.2 million during the last 12 months.
This data is from the Current Population Survey and is seasonally adjusted. More information can be found in "The Employment Situation: January 2009," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL 09-0117.