Joint Economic Committee (JEC)
Senator Sam Brownback
September Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for September (pdf summary available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf). Highlights of the report:
Unemployment Rate
· The unemployment rate rose to 9.8% in September, from 9.7% in August.
· The unemployment rate was 4.9% at the start of the recession in December 2007.
· There were 15.1 million unemployed persons in September. The number of unemployed persons has risen by 7.6 million since the start of the recession.
Payroll Employment
· Total non-farm payroll employment declined for the 21st consecutive month in September. Payroll employment declined by 263,000 jobs in September, following declines of 201,000 (revised from 216,000) in August, and 304,000 (revised from 276,000) in July.
o Payroll employment has fallen by 7.2 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.
o Monthly payroll job losses averaged 256,000 during the 3rd quarter 2009, compared with an average of 428,000 during the 2ndquarter 2009.
· Construction employment fell by 64,000 in September (the 27th consecutive payroll employment decline within the sector) and has declined by 1.5 million since the beginning of the recession. Over the past three months job losses in construction averaged 64,000, compared with an average of 80,000 during the 2nd quarter.
· Financial activities employment fell by 10,000 in September, and by 541,000 since the start of the recession.
· Manufacturing employment declined by 51,000 jobs in September and by 2.1 million since the beginning of the recession.
· Healthcare employment continued to rise in September with a gain of 19,200 jobs.
· Government employment declined by 53,000 during September. Local governments accounted for 37,000 and State governments for 10,000 of the decline.
