Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/14/2010 -- The number of new jobless claims fell to 451,000 for the week ending September 4, which was down by 27,000. But the number is low because economists say that a number of people have dropped out of the workforce.

In August, there were an estimated 1.1 million Americans who were labeled as discouraged workers, workers who gave up looking for work. 4.47 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits. Although the official unemployment rate for August is 9.6 percent, the real unemployment rate is supposed to be 16.7 percent.

This figure is calculated using the U-6 parameter which takes into account the number of discouraged workers and people doing part-time jobs but looking for fulltime work are counted too.

The new White House economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, has said that unemployment is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. Reacting to this news, A. Harrison Barnes, CEO of the job search engine Hound, says that even though the jobless rate is high, there are still jobs to be found in most industries. He is backing up his statement on the fact that his website has been able to find almost 90,000 jobs in the last seven days.

The industries with the most job openings as found by Hound are: customer service (22,687), retail jobs (29,263), healthcare jobs (136,993), and blue collar jobs (49,171).