September brought us another month of increasing payrolls, but not enough of an increase to make a dent in the unemployment rate, according to figures released this morning by the Labor Department. U.S. payrolls added 103,000 jobs for the month, although the official jobless rate remained stuck at 9.1 percent. The government also revised upward the jobs figure for August; it now turns out that we added 57,000 jobs that month, instead of the zero figure that was originally reported.
The breakdown for September was that the private sector added 137,000 jobs, while government payrolls fell by 34,000. The biggest-gaining sectors were service providers, who added 85,000 jobs on the month, and construction, which added 26,000. There was a decline of 13,000 factory jobs, the biggest loss in that category since August 2010.
While the trend is in the right direction, 103,000 new jobs a month is really only enough to tread water in a growing population. Economists estimate that we need to create closer to 200,000 jobs a month to really make a difference in the unemployment rate. The trend is in the right direction, but we aren't quite there yet.
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