The Good News Is that the Bad News Wasn’t as Bad as Expected!

Today’s jobs report is being celebrated as “better-than-expected” which probably comes as a surprise to most non-Wall Streeters. After all, the unemployment rate ticked up from 9.5% in July to 9.6% for August, and there are now close to 15 million unemployed people in the country. That also doesn’t count the people who have left the job market entirely.
The “good” part of the news is that the private sector added 107,000 jobs in August while Wall Street was expecting just 40,000. Overall employment fell by 54,000 which was the same amount lost during July.

Employment at service-providers decreased 54,000. Construction companies added 19,000 workers, the first gain in four months, and retailers cut 4,900 workers.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent to $22.66 from $22.60 in the prior month, today’s report showed.
Government payrolls decreased by 121,000. State and local governments reduced employment by 10,000, while the federal government lost 111,000 jobs.
The average work week for all workers held at 34.2 hours.

As I mentioned, the overall unemployment rate rose from 9.5% to 9.6%, if we break down the decimals, it really rose from 9.51% to 9.64%. Only 12,000 more job losses and the number would round up to 9.7%.
One of the bright spots is that the civilian labor force increased by 550,000. This means that more people are looking for work. All I can say is that it could have been worse.

Posted by on September 3rd, 2010 at 9:46 am


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