Unemployment Dips to 4.6% - 37 Consecutive Months of Jobs Growth
Unemployment:
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).
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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.
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.
the past 37 consecutive months with payroll job gains, over 5.8 million new
jobs have been created.
the year ending in September, over 1.7 million new payroll jobs have been
created.
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.
4.6 % unemployment rate is well below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003.
Jeffrey Wrase
Chief Economist
to the Vice Chairman
Joint Economic
Committee
G-07
(202) 224-2335
