The Bureau of Labor Statistics employment numbers are out. There was a 103,000 net job increase in September.
The official (U-4) unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.1%. The more comprehensive U-6 number edged up .3% to 16.5% for July. U-6 is the total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.
From the report:
Nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000 in September, and the unemployment
rate held at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The
increase in employment partially reflected the return to payrolls of about 45,000
telecommunications workers who had been on strike in August. In September, job gains
occurred in professional and business services, health care, and construction.
Government employment continued to trend down.
The one big dark spot on the report is that we continue to shed government jobs (34,000 in September). In this economy, those folks have very few opportunities to move to the private sector so they end up going from being productive government employees to non-productive unemployment recipients. Not a good trade (unless you’re a Tea Party government hater, I suppose).
No, not that bad at all. It’s still not acceptable and people aren’t getting jobs that are good enough, but it’s not freefall either, despite what the TeaOP wants.
However, the numbers and the good revisions for the last 2 months shows just how badly Wisconsin is doing under Walker. Wisconsin’s job growth in the last 3 months is HALF the rate of the nation’s, and of course, we’ve lost 8,700 jobs in July and August.
We weren’t drifting below the rest of America until the last 6 months. Makes you wonder what changed, eh?
I haven’t hunted down the most recent state-by-state numbers but I’ll see about that tonight.
State numbers come out about 2 weeks after the national ones. Usually around a Thursday