--- title: 'No spouse, no job: Unemployment hits singles hard' description: It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if… authors: - name: timestaff url: https://money.com/author/timestaff/ articles: 459 covers: - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z' modified: '2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z' section: Economy and Politics word_count: 363 canonical: https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![No spouse, no job: Unemployment hits singles hard](https://money.com/img/logo-social.png) It's rotten enough, of course, that [September's unemployment rate](http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/02/news/economy/jobs_september/index.htm?postversion=2009100210 "CNNMoney.com story on September unemployment"), as reported Friday by the [Bureau of Labor Statistics](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm "BLS Employment Situation Summary"), rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if the unemployment rate will reach the 10% mark before the Dow hits its own nice round number of 10,000. But the numbers are even worse for particular segments of the population. [As *USA Today* reports](http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-10-01-recession-singles-unemployment_N.htm), the jobless rate for single people is more than double that of married people -- 13.5% for the unmarried in August vs. 6.3% for wedded workers. One likely reason for the disparity, a researcher tells the newspaper, is that married men, motivated by a family to support, are more likely to take a new job at lower pay than their single counterparts; also, he says, singles tend to be younger and have less education and experience than those who are married. ![](http://content.money.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/chart_unemployment_rate_100209_2-032.gif) Other better-known disparities behind the 9.8% headline figure remain in force. The unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics are higher than the national average, at 15.4% and 12.7%, respectively; the rate for whites is a below-average 9.0%, and for Asians it's 7.4%. The rate for adult women is 7.8% and for adult men is 10.3%. For teenagers, it's a whopping 25.9%. Among high-school graduates with no college education, 10.8% can't find work, while only 4.9% people with a bachelor's degree or higher face that problem. Of course, that's just the people who are unemployed and looking for work, not those who are working part-time but wish they were working full-time. Nor do those numbers include people who have given up on looking for a job not because they don't want one, but because they've just given up on finding anything. So if you really want to get depressed, go to the [EconomPic blog](http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/ "EconomPic"), which graphically (I mean that in the literal sense) shows how [the unemployment rate would be even worse](http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/10/unemployment-even-worse-than-headlines.html) than it is were it not for the jump in people who have dropped out of the labor force. You can also see some unpleasant artwork showing how the [hours worked per population member](http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/10/hours-worked-per-person-tailspin.html) is falling off a cliff, and how the all-in underemployment rate is [higher than ever](http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/10/broader-unemployment-to-17.html). ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Unemployment", "item": "https://money.com/unemployment/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "No spouse, no job: Unemployment hits singles hard" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/", "name": "No spouse, no job: Unemployment hits singles hard", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "No spouse, no job: Unemployment hits singles hard", "articleSection": "Economy and Politics", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://money.com/img/logo-social.png", "width": 300, "height": 300 }, { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://content.money.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/chart_unemployment_rate_100209_2-032.gif", "width": 220, "height": 242 } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "timestaff", "url": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/timestaff/#author" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z", "description": "It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if…", "abstract": "It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if…", "@id": "https://money.com/no-spouse-no-job-unemployment-hits-singles-hard/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2009-10-02T20:38:35.000Z", "wordCount": 363, "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Political economy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Unemployment", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment" ] } ] } ] } ```