The U.S. employment situation remains complicated as September’s seasonally adjusted monthly change as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was a disappointing 29,000-job gain, far below economists’ expectations. Additionally, revisions decreased employment for July and August by 60,000 jobs, reversing July back to its original net loss reported previously. Moderate gains occurred in the Education/Health Services (+20,000 jobs), Trade/Transportation/Utilities (+18,000 jobs), and Construction (+11,000 jobs) industries. Last month’s jobs leader – Leisure/Hospitality – gained only 10,000 jobs for the month as the summer hiring season ended. The Manufacturing and Other Services sectors also had modest gains for the month. Professional/Business Services and Mining/Logging swung from job gains in August to losses in September, but the Financial Services and Information industries continued to see losses. The Government sector saw a loss of 17,000 jobs for the month, primarily in local government, excluding education. Meanwhile, the U3 seasonally adjusted headline unemployment rate (from the survey of households) increased slightly to 4.2% in September, remaining in a narrow range of 4.1% to 4.3% since March.
This post is part of a series analyzing employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more on this data, read previous posts on Job Growth.
