Friday, November 4, 2011

October Employment: Not Bad

Not really good, either...  The BLS reports that the unemployment rate ticked down to 9.0% (from 9.1%) in October.  Payroll employment increased (weakly) by 80,000; the private sector added 104,000 jobs but the public sector subtracted 24,000.   The numbers from the survey of households (which is used to calculate the unemployment rate) were a bit stronger - the number of people employed rose by 277,000.
Also, the payroll employment growth (from the survey of establishments) figures were revised upwards for August and September, by 57,000 and 55,000, respectively.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% and payroll employment rose by 883,000.  That is, October is a month where a regular "seasonal" gain is removed to make the seasonally adjusted number.

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