The Real Economy 5 big trends shaking up the job market

Let's zoom out a bit. Here are five important trends in the labor market that you should be thinking about beyond the monthly unemployment figure:
1) More people are on payroll today than any other time in U.S. history
Yes, we lost a lot of jobs during the recession, but we've gained those jobs back. Now there are 139 million people on payroll in the U.S.
The catch? A big driver of that record is simply population growth. There are still over 9 million people unemployed -- people who are looking for work, but can't find a job. That's down from over 15 million in 2009, but the labor market isn't back to full health yet.
2) About a third of the workforce is freelance
This is a hard one to measure. The most recent government data available comes from a 2006 Government Accountability Office report which concluded that about 31% of the workforce was 'contingent', meaning they aren't in permanent or full-time jobs. But both the recession and technological advances have changed that dynamic.
A recent study commissioned by the Freelancers Union says that 53 million freelancers (including independent contractors, temporary workers and moonlighters) make up 34% of the U.S. workforce.
And the number is expected to grow. Workers under 35 are more likely to freelance and an Intuit study predicts that 'contingent workers will exceed 40 percent of the workforce by 2020.'
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3) About 5 million 16-24 year olds aren't working or in school
That's one in seven young people, according to a Social Science Research Council report from late last year. There's even a term for them -- disconnected youth -- and the rate in certain neighborhoods can reach as high as 30%. Unsurprisingly, there are racial correlations to these statistics. For example, about one in four black and latino youth in Philadelphia are not in school or working.
The Brookings Institute has looked at this issue as well, saying the labor market fortunes of youth have "plummeted."
The good news? We're moving in the right direction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the July unemployment rate for 16-to-24 year-olds was the lowest since the recession started, at 13.6%.