The global economic downturn has taken a serious toll on the United States as the world’s most powerful country witnessed a tragic hike in its unemployment rate, that now stands at 10.2%. This unfortunate statistical figure has been attributed to the massive layoffs being done by the companies to save their own existence during this recession period. The unemployment figure of 10.2% is the highest ever since 1983. Even with the economy on the rebound, the American workforce is still having a pretty hard time finding jobs, thus pushing the rate from 9.8% in the month of September to 10.2% for the month of October.

The number of layoffs for the month of September stood at a staggering 219,000 job losses, but the figure has somewhat stabilized in October, with the current figure being 190,000 job lost. However, even with the decrease in the figures of layoffs, the fact still remains that, the ones who have lost their jobs are not able to find a new one, thus adding to the unemployment statistics.

The number of individuals who had declared themselves as self employed has hit rock bottom, meaning that these people are now unemployed and so are the teenagers who were working. The teenage unemployment rate reached a massive 27.6%, including a hike of 1.8% since last month. The highly qualified individuals and professionals are still able to find jobs in their fields of expertise and this have contributed substantially less to the unemployment rate. However, it is the worker class that has been hit the hardest, the ones who work in factories and other labor intensive sectors. The rate of unemployment for the people in this sector rose to 14.5% from 14.1% and the ones in the construction field witnessed an even bigger unemployment hike, with the figure jumping from 14.3% to 15.5%.

Via CNN Money.