The Romney campaign is highlighting the record of the Obama administration on employment for women. The following graphs illustrate the record. Click on the graph for a larger view.

Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 1992 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 1992 to March 2012.
Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 1992 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 2000 to March 2012. Note the record low during the last Clinton term in 2007.
Graph showing female unemployment rate in the US 2006 to March 2012. Created by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph shows the unemployment rate for women age 20 and older from January 2006 to March 2012. The graph illustrates the onset of the recession and female unemployment rates during the Obama administration.
Graph illustrating the number of unemployed women in the US from 2000 to March 2012. Graph prepared by Charles Simmins using BLS data.	Graph illustrating the number of unemployed women in the US from 2000 to March 2012. Note the record low number and compare it to the number of women unemployed in March 2012. Over three million more women are unemployed now.
Graph illustrating the number of women employed in the U.S. from 2000 through March 2012. Prepared by Charles Simmins from BLS data.	This graph illustrates the number of American women over age 20 employed from 2000 through March 2012. Note the record number employed in June 2008. The loss of employment from June 2008 to March 2012 is 759,000 women.

The increase in unemployed women coupled with a net loss of women in the work force is dramatic. Couple that with the fact that 34 percent of Americans living in poverty live in a household headed by a woman and you can see the damage that the current economy has done to women.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a great deal to say about the November 2011 unemployment numbers and the October numbers from the metro areas. The unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in November. In October, the unemployment rates fell in 281 of the 372 metro areas the BLS watches.

The pictures tell a far more discouraging tale. These graphs are from the BLS site, using their data. None of the graphs present any sort of encouraging picture for those who are unemployed or those who have given up. And, lots of folks have just given up.

Graph of the percentage of Americans employed compared to the general population for November 2011

Graph of the percentage of Americans who could work that had a job in November 2011

Graph of the average weeks of unemployment for Americans in November 2011

Graph of the number of Americans unemployed over 27 weeks for November 2011

Graph of the number of Americans discouraged from looking for work for November 2011

The graphs were built to show both the current record or near record “bad” numbers as well as their opposites from the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Fewer people are working and more people have dropped out of the labor force. That is the tale of November 2011.

The slideshow illustrates the unemployment data for each July for the last decade, 2002 to 2011.

Bureau of labor Statistics graph of black unemployment rates 1982-2011

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has kept data on unemployment among American blacks since 1972. The record high rate of unemployment was in June 1983, 20.7%. The record low was in April 2000 at 7%. For June 2011 the black unemployment rate is 16.2%.

The last thirty years have seen four peaks for black unemployment and three troughs.

The highest rate of black unemployment in the Obama era was 16.5% in March and April 2010. It has now been fourteen months since that peak. Black unemployment has dropped to 16.2%.

In comparison, after the first peak in the table, black unemployment had dropped from 20.7% to 16% in fourteen months. After the second peak it went from 14.7% to 12.7%. The fourteen months after the third peak saw black unemployment go from 11.5% to 10.5%.

The last Census report on poverty in America was released in September 2010 for the year 2009. Black poverty was up from its record low rate in 2000 of 22.5%. In 2009 just over one in four American blacks lived in poverty. For blacks living in a household headed by a woman, 40% lived in poverty.

Over the last generation, reductions in black unemployment have become increasingly more difficult to achieve. Even the record low rate set in 2000 was the highest of any minority and came during the one of the greatest economic upturns since World War Two. In the midst of an economic boom, seven percent of blacks remained unemployed.

Black unemployment, like black poverty, contains a core group that may not be reachable by economics and the free market as we know it. This hardcore cluster of poor blacks was created by social dynamics and governmental policies that may have created a permanently disenfranchised class lacking the ability to change their own condition.

The January 2011 unemployment numbers have been released by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We have placed the records for each statistic into this table. The records clearly demonstrate the Clinton era boom when unemployment was extremely low. As prior stories have reported, the Bush era maintained near record lows until the last year of his administration.

Nearly 1 million Americans have left the labor force since Barack Obama was inaugurated. The average number of weeks on unemployment has nearly doubled.

Hispanic unemployment has increased by 20% in the last two years but has more than doubled since its record low in 2006. Unemployment for blacks has gone up nearly 25% under this administration and has more than doubled since its record low in 2000.

The unemployment rate for women reached a modern low in December of 2000 at 3.3%. In January 2009 it was 6.4% and it was 7.9% in January 2011. As other media outlets have reported, unemployment appears to be affects far more men than women.