style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>September Employment and
Unemployment:  The
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and
unemployment for September (BLS pdf summary available
at title="http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf).

style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Highlights of the report:

style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;
mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol'>·style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>                    
Non-farm
payroll employment increased by 51,000 in September, following gains of 188,000
in August and 123,000 in July.

• Payroll
  job gains in August and July were revised up by 60,000 and 2,000
  additional jobs, respectively.

style='mso-list:Ignore'>·                    
This
month, the BLS is announcing the preliminary estimate for the next benchmark
revision to payroll employment (a process that annually revises the payroll
employment estimates to incorporate employment data derived largely from
unemployment insurance tax reports).

• According to the BLS: “Preliminary tabulations of
  employment from state unemployment insurance tax reports indicate that
  the estimate of total nonfarm payroll
  employment for March 2006 will require an upward revision of
  approximately 810,000…”


• This is a larger-than-normal expected revision
  (six-tenths of one percent vs. the benchmark revision average over the
  past 10 years of plus or minus two-tenths of one percent).


• The final benchmark revision will be incorporated into
  the payroll employment survey on February 2, 2007, with publication of
  the January 2007 employment situation.

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In
the past 37 consecutive months with payroll job gains, over 5.8 million new
jobs have been created. 

style='mso-list:Ignore'>·                    
Over
the year ending in September, over 1.7 million new payroll jobs have been
created.

style='mso-list:Ignore'>·                    
The
unemployment rate (calculated from the household survey of employment) edged
down to 4.6% in September, from 4.7% in August and 4.8% in July. 

style='mso-list:Ignore'>o                               
The
4.6 % unemployment rate is well below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003. 

Jeffrey Wrasestyle='color:blue'>

Chief Economist
to the Vice Chairman

Joint Economic
Committee

G-07 w:st="on">Dirksen w:st="on">Senate Office
Buildingstyle='color:black'>

(202) 224-2335style='color:black'>

href="mailto:jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov" title="mailto:jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov">jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov