From the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee:

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:
Non-farm payroll employment increased by 110,000 new jobs in September. The change in payroll employment for August was revised up to an increase of 89,000 from an earlier estimate of a decline of 4,000 jobs. Nearly all of the August revision reflected an upward revision to government employment, particularly local education.The change in payroll employment for July was also revised up, to an increase of 93,000 from an earlier estimate of an increase of 68,000 jobs. Through September, there have been 49 consecutive months with job gains. Over 8.4 million new jobs have been added to payrolls over that period. Payroll employment changes have averaged 90,000 per month for June through September, compared with an average of 147,000 for the first five months of the year.Payroll employment grew by over 1.6 million jobs over the year ending in September.Reflecting adjustments in the housing sector, employment in the construction industry has declined by 112,000 jobs since peaking in September 2006.Each year, the BLS revises (“benchmarks”) the payroll sample-based survey estimates of employment to reflect employment data from state unemployment insurance tax reports. Preliminary estimates of employment from the state tax reports indicate that the March 2007 payroll employment estimate will require a downward revision of 297,000 jobs. · The unemployment rate edged up to 4.7% in September.
o The unemployment rate remains well below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003.