The official count on area unemployment, of course, is delivered monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics with a nudge from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The raw numbers crunched by the BLS (based on state and regional jobless data) is…

Friday’s announcement that the national unemployment rate now stands at 9.8 percent (17 percent if the underemployed and displaced workers who have given up a job search are added to the equation) bears out forecasts of a recovery that will see…

Unemployment in the St. Louis region increased to 9.4 percent in August, a one-tenth of a point increase over the numbers the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis adjusted to account for seasonal jobs in July.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in…

Illlinois’ top labor official Thursday expressed cautious optimism at the news that the state’s unemployment rate dropped by four-tenths of a point in August.

It marks the first time in 28 straight months the state has not seen an increase or zero…

Missouri’s unemployment rate, which leveled off in June and July, began inching upward again in August with the state Department of Economic Development reporting that 9.5 percent of the state’s labor force are now out of work.

Not since 1983, when state…

An international business major, Josh Welch’s goal upon arriving at the at the University of Missouri-St. Louis was perhaps landing an entry level job in Paris.

Needless to say, the economy has foiled that objective.

Friday afternoon found Welch making the rounds…

The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover report released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not bode well for unemployed Americans already waiting, on average, 25.1 weeks for a new job to materialize.

According to the BLS, the job openings rate (defined as…

The introduction of a new tool to measure employment trends offers further credence to the theory that the country is inching out of the recession that has stripped away an estimated 14.9 million jobs over the past 21 months.

Kronos, a…

In its “Ask the Explainer” column, Slate magazine last week detailed how the government and various agencies come up with unemployment figures.

Slate asks, How Does the Government Count Lost Jobs — And Why are There So Many Different Estimates?

The piece does a good…

News that unemployment rate has hit a level unseen since 1983, 9.7 percent, is not the best way to begin a holiday weekend ostensibly set aside to recognize the contributions of working Americans.

Were that not depressing enough, the Economic Policy Institute heralded…