Unemployment Rate Holds at 9.1% with No New Jobs Added in August

The national unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent as the U.S. economy added no new jobs last month, according to ""figures released Friday"":http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm by the U.S. Department of Labor, which cited ""nonfarm payroll employment as unchanged (0) in August.""

According to the _Washington Post_, it’s the first time since February 1945 that the government has reported a net job change of zero.

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Analysts were expecting some semblance of job growth in the highly anticipated report, although forecasts were all over the map, from as high as 93,000 new jobs to as low as 16,000 and everywhere in between -- representative of just how disjointed the economy itself has become in recent months.

Stock markets have soared and plunged by profound margins, European powerhouses are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the U.S. faced a once-unthinkable default yet even with a downgrade of government debt we saw a run on Treasuries.

It's been an erratic stretch to say the least, but there are undisputed constants -â€" economic growth has stalled, housing remains the biggest drag on any movement forward, and unemployment has become a long-term problem.

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July's numbers were revised downward to show 85,000 newly added jobs during the month rather than the 117,000 previously reported. June's figures were also lowered, from 46,000 to just 20,000 new jobs.

The state of the job market has dire implications for mortgage and housing markets already struggling with a backlog of delinquent loans and ballooned inventories of distressed properties left behind by those unpaid mortgages.

The ""Office of Management and Budget"":http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/ noted in a report released this week, almost 3 million homes have been repossessed since 2006 and at the beginning of 2011, there were estimated to be 5 million seriously delinquent mortgage loans, many of which will eventually result in foreclosure.

These problems are only compounded when homeowners are faced with a loss of income and no means to continue making their mortgage payments. Economists and housing analysts say the biggest issue behind today's elevated numbers of past-due mortgages is extended unemployment.

According to Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 14 million people counted as unemployed in the United States as of the end of August. Of those, 6.0 million had been without a job for at least six-and-a-half months.

President Obama is set to unveil a new package of stimulus proposals next Thursday to incite job creation and economic growth. This week, the White House put out its ""midsession budget review"":http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/MSR which outlines projections for the labor market.

The administration projects that unemployment will average 8.8 percent in 2011, 8.3 percent in 2012, and 7.7 percent in 2013.The Congressional Budget Office expects unemployment to remain high for a longer period. It projects an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent in 2011 and 8.7 percent from 2012 through 2013.