Joint Economic Committee (JEC) Senator Sam Brownback
July Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for July (pdf summary available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm). Highlights of the report:
Unemployment Rate
· The unemployment rate edged down to 9.4% in July, from 9.5% in June.
· The unemployment rate had been 4.9% when the recession began.
· There were 14.5 million unemployed persons in July.
Payroll Employment
· Total non-farm payroll employment declined by 247,000 jobs in July, following declines of 443,000 in June, and 303,000 in May.
o Employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.
o Payroll job losses over the past three months have averaged 331,000, compared with an average of 645,000 over the prior six months.
· Construction employment fell by 76,000 in July. Over the past three months job losses in construction averaged 73,000, compared with an average of 117,000 over the prior six months.
· Service-sector employment declined by 119,000 in July and by 3.3 million jobs since the beginning of the recession.
· Manufacturing employment declined by 52,000 jobs in July and by 2.0 million since the beginning of the recession.