Chart: U.S. unemployment rate over the last 25 months

In January, the number of unemployed persons decreased to 14.8 million, and the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage point to 9.7 percent. This is according to new data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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In January, unemployment rates for most major worker groups — adult men (10.0 percent), teenagers (26.4 percent), blacks (16.5 percent) and Hispanics (12.6 percent) — showed little change. The jobless rate for adult women fell to 7.9 percent, and the rate for whites declined to 8.7 percent. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

In January, the number of persons unemployed due to job loss decreased by 378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent job losers.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million.

This data is from the Current Population Survey and is seasonally adjusted. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — January 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL 10-0141.