Unemployment Rate

Maryland's unemployment situation took a turn for the worse this spring and hasn't bounced back, with new estimates suggesting that the state lost 11,000 jobs in June — among the worst performances in the country. The U.S. Department of Labor said Friday that only two states saw bigger declines in June — Wisconsin and Tennessee — after adjusting for seasonal variations, which some economists worry skews the numbers. It was Maryland's fourth month in a row of job declines by that measure, a sharp change after a strong winter.

ON THE SITE... Md. employers cut 7,500 jobs in May :  Maryland's unemployment rate increased to 6.8 percent, from 6.7 percent in April. That remains below the nation's rate of 8.2 percent in May, but the job losses were among the largest in the nation. Death of 1-year-old in West Baltimore ruled a homicide : A 22-year-old man has been charged with second-degree murder after police found the infant girl shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday in a home in the 800 block of N. Stricker St. in Harlem Park.  Seven arrested at Starscape Festival on drug charges :  The attendees of the June 9-10 music festival at Fort Armistead Park were charged with possession of drugs including LSD, MDMA and marijuana.

Maryland shed 7,500 jobs in May, as the state posted one of the largest losses in the country for the second month in a row, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday. Only North Carolina and Pennsylvania saw bigger cuts in May, according to the new estimates. Quirks of weather may have played a role in Maryland's poor showing, but experts warned that the state's economy appears to be weakening just as a potentially large pullback in federal spending threatens to bring more pain to a region flush with government contractors, agencies and research grants.

Your editorial ("Doing better than 'fine,'" June 12) was correct in mildly chastising President Barack Obama for not being upbeat enough about the record of the private sector during his administration. You correctly cited the mess he inherited form the Republicans. You also pointed out Ronald Reagan as an example. The Republicans, including Mitt Romney, always say this president is doing a terrible job on the economy and long for the days of Ronald Reagan's performance in this area.

If you're looking for job security, how about becoming a lawyer or financial analyst? These professions, according to Robert Half International, have lower unemployment rates than the current national average of 8.3 percent. The staffing firm says the unemployment rate in the first quarter was 1.9 percent for lawyers, 3.6 percent for software developers, 3.9 percent for financial analysts, 4.4 percent for accountants and 2.8 percent for human resource managers. (Someone has to be there to lay off everyone else.)

This probably won't come as a tremendous shock: Falling unemployment gives a boost to home prices, according to a report from the American Institute for Economic Research . The Massachusetts think tank said it looked at 20 metro areas from 1990 to 2009 and found that a 1 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate results -- on average -- in a 3.7 percent increase in home prices. "This suggests that the sluggishness of the housing market recovery is directly related to the slow improvement in unemployment," writes research fellow Shelly X. Liang.

Maryland employers added 1,500 jobs in March - thanks entirely to growth in the private sector - but the state's unemployment rate inched up as the pool of would-be workers expanded more rapidly. The jobless rate was 6.6 percent in March, up from 6.5 percent in February, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. That's because the labor force, the number of adults working or looking for work, grew by 4,200 people in March, according to the agency. An improving economic situation typically brings out more job seekers, as people who had been discouraged by earlier difficulties get back in the hunt.

The Obama administration and the liberal news media continues to keeps up their line that the unemployment rate is between 8 percent 9 percent. Don't believe it, as nothing could be further from the truth. The real unemployment rate ranges close to 15 percent or 16 percent because of the Obama's administration failed economic policies of the past three years. The administration's fuzzy math does not reflect the millions who simply quit looking for work or gave up on finding full time jobs.

Maryland's employers added 8,000 jobs in February, the latest sign of the state's economic recovery, labor officials said Friday. It's the sixth month in a row of jobs gains. The state's jobless rate remained unchanged at 6.5 percent from a month earlier, but that's nearly 2 percentage points lower than the 8.3 percent national average, preliminary figures from the U.S. Department of Labor show. "Employment is at its highest level since September 2008," Maryland Labor Secretary Alexander Sanchez said during a conference call.