Telecom Unemployment Rate
The telecommunications sector lost 49,500 jobs from July 2009 to July 2010, including 5,800 jobs lost from June to July of this year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 919,400 jobs in the sector in July.
The computer and electronics products segment remained flat month over month, increasing 1,100 jobs, but still down 23,800 jobs from the year-ago period to an overall job count of 1.1 million jobs. Most of the nearly 24,000 job losses from July 2009 to July 2010 came from the electronics instruments sub-category.
Overall, the telecom unemployment rate inched up month over month from 9% to 10.1% in July. Year over year, however, the unemployment rate stayed flat. The number of jobs in the wireless subsector creeped up about 1,000 year over year and month over month to 193,100 positions in June. These figures lag by a month. The unemployment rate nationwide remained steady at 9.5%, although payroll employment dropped by 131,000 jobs.
A total of 16% of telecom workers belonged to unions in 2009, according to the labor bureau. A push is under way by the Communications Workers of America to form a union for employees at T-Mobile USA Inc., similar to the union that is organized at German parent Deutsche Telekom AG. According to the CWA, German organizers met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski in late July to talk about organizing T-Mobile USA workers, and labor rights issues at Deutsche Telekom.
