Third Straight Increase
It was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate, a trend that won't reverse itself without "concerted action" on the part of policy makers, said Melissa Boteach, who leads a campaign to reduce poverty at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based research group with ties to the Obama administration.
"The numbers should be a wake-up call to our elected officials that we need to act immediately to invest in job creation and protect vulnerable families," she said.
Since the low point in the labor market downturn in February 2010, nonfarm payrolls have increased by 1.9 million, showing that without stronger growth, it will take years to recoup about 8.7 million jobs lost as a result of the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.
The jobless rate rose to 9.6 percent in 2010 from 9.3 percent in 2009. Long-term unemployment, the percent of those without a job for 27 weeks or longer, increased to 43 percent from 31 percent, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.
"The figures we are releasing today are really important," said Robert Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, on a conference call with reporters. "They tell us how the changing economic conditions have really impacted the American family."