Joblessness Down to 6.9%, Best of Reagan Presidency : December Rate Is Lowest Since April of 1980

Unemployment eased to 6.9% last month, the lowest rate since April of 1980, the government reported today, in the labor market’s best showing of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

The small 0.1% improvement from November’s rate resulted from the creation of 237,000 jobs--many of them from a rebound in manufacturing--accompanied by a further reduction of 138,000 in the number of Americans officially listed as unemployed.

Total employment in December, aided by strong growth in service-related jobs such as those in retail trade, reached an all-time high of 108.2 million, the Labor Department said. At the same time, the ranks of the unemployed shrank from 8.161 million to 8.023 million.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that although two separate job surveys showed substantial job growth in 1985, the gains were less than those recorded in the prior two years, when the economy was in a more robust period of recovery from the 1981-82 recession.

The last time seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment was below 7% was during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Unemployment averaged 7.2% last year.

Fell to 7.1% in August

From February to July of last year, the jobless rate was frozen at 7.3%, then fell to 7.1% in August and held at that rate through October, based on end-of-the-year revisions released today.

In December of 1984, the jobless rate had stood at 7.2%.

Since then, total employment rose from roughly 106.2 million to the 108.2 million detailed in today’s report, a net increase of virtually 2 million jobs.

Over the same period, the total number of unemployed Americans fell from 8.25 million to 8.02 million.

December’s 6.9% unemployment rate was nearly 4 percentage points below the 10.7% peak rate registered at the depth of the recession in November, 1982. At that time, the rolls of the unemployed totaled more than 12 million.

A separate business payroll survey, which is not used in the compilation of the unemployment rate, showed an increase of 320,000 jobs last month, to 99.1 million, with the bulk of the improvement coming in the service area.

3 Million Jobs Added

Over the last year, according to this business survey, about 3 million jobs have been added to non-farm payrolls. In that same time, about 640,000 jobs were created in retail trade, with the strongest growth coming in the grocery store and restaurant industries.

Janet L. Norwood, commissioner of labor statistics, told the congressional Joint Economic Committee that despite the improvement from November to December, “the number of jobless remains a very high 8 million.”

She noted that, while manufacturing employment was still below the level of a year ago, factory jobs were growing during the last quarter of 1985, when the number of manufacturing jobs increased by 174,000.

The size of the nation’s labor force, which includes those looking for work as well as those on the job, expanded by 1.8 million over the last year, the bureau said, adding that adult women accounted for 80% of the labor force growth.

Within the various worker groups, unemployment rates held relatively steady, although the rate for teen-agers rose from 18.4% to 18.8%. But the rate for blacks fell significantly, from 15.6% to 14.9%.