There's good news and bad news on the employment front. First, the bad news.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, the jobless rate in America just crept up to 9.6%, from 9.5%. The good news, however, is that employers added 67,000 new jobs to their payrolls in the month of August. The results paint a mixed picture.

Even with though companies are slowly taking on more workers, there isn't enough hiring going on to knock down the stubbornly high unemployment rate. That spells trouble for the overall economy, especially when you consider that about 8 million of the country's roughly 15 million unemployed workers have been out of a job for six months or longer. Such chronic unemployment takes a toll on everyone, because people who don't have jobs won't spend money on things like cars, vacations, homes or consumer goods -- all of which stimulates the economy.

As this AP story notes, the economy shed nearly 8.4 million jobs in 2008 and 2009. So far in 2010, private employers have added back 763,000 jobs. But that hasn't made a dent in the unemployment rate. It was at 9.7% in January, and now it's at 9.6%. I wonder what the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve Bank might try to do next to get a handle on this problem.

What do you think should be done to battle unemployment? Are you going through a layoff or have you ever been through a downsizing?

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Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, an award-winning financial news journalist and former Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC, has been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times, as well as magazines ranging from Essence and Redbook to Black Enterprise and Smart Money. Check out her New York Times best seller 'Zero Debt: The Ultimate Guide to Financial Freedom.'