Unemployment Rate To Hit 10%

Don't expect the economy to reverse course this year: The 9.6 percent unemployment rate will probably inch toward 10 percent in the next few months, the Labor Department says, as the economy is growing too slowly to create enough jobs. The economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in the second quarter, a drop compared to 3.7 percent in the previous three months. So far in 2010, just 723,000 of the 8.4 million who lost their jobs in the recession have found new work—8.6 percent. BofA Merrill Lynch predicts joblessness will peak at 10.1 percent in 2011; previous predictions put that number at 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, the underemployment rate—measuring people with part-time jobs who want to work full-time—grew to 16.7 percent in August, up from 16.5 percent.