August Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for August (BLS pdf summary available at http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.).



Highlights of the report:

· Non-farm payroll employment increased by 128,000 in August.

· In the past 36 consecutive months with payroll job gains, over 5.7 million new jobs have been created.

· Over the year ending in August, 1.7 million new payroll jobs have been created.

· The unemployment rate (calculated from the household survey of employment) edged down to 4.7% in August, from 4.8% in July.

o The 4.7 % 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 Dirksen Senate Office Building

(202) 224-2335

jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov