Here's part of the release put out this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unemployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000).Look like things are at least stabilizing, eh?
Household Survey Data
The number of unemployed persons (14.9 million) and the unemployment rate
(9.6 percent) were little changed in August. From May through August, the
jobless rate remained in the range of 9.5 to 9.7 percent.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (9.8 per-
cent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (26.3 percent), whites (8.7 per-
cent), blacks (16.3 percent), and Hispanics (12.0 percent) showed little
change in August. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.2 percent, not season-
ally adjusted.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) de-
clined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of
unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.
What's not in the release, but deep in the footnotes of the data, is the birth/death index. This is the Labor Departments bogus fudge factor where they, ahem, "estimate" how many new jobs were created by new business start up,and you know with the great shape the economy is in everyone was out there launching new businesses in August. Or, at least, that is what the Labor Department would have you believe. The BLS for July added 6,000 to the employment ranks through the birth/death index. For August, the BLS goosed this bogus number to 115,000. Without this goose, the increase in newly unemployed for August would have been triple what was reported.
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