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

Unemployment Rate

• The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5% in July.
• The unemployment rate was 5.0% at the start of the recession in December, 2007.
• The percentage of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) was little changed at a level of 44.9% (6.6 million workers) in July (the June level was 45.5%).
• The size of the labor force continued to decline in July and is now 1.4 million below its peak level in May, 2009.
• There were 14.6 million unemployed persons in July. 

Payroll Employment

• Total non-farm payroll employment fell by 131,000 in July, following a loss of 221,000 in June (revised from  a loss of 125,000) and a gain of 432,000 in May (revised from 433,000).  
  • The loss of temporary Census jobs accounted for 143,000 of the net decline in jobs. Total government employment fell by 202,000 in July. 
  • Private sector employment rose by 71,000 in July.  Manufacturing (+36,000), healthcare (+27,000), and transportation and warehousing (+12,000) accounted for the largest job gains. 
  • Financial activities (-17,000), professional and business services (-13,000), and construction (-11,000) accounted for the largest private sector job losses. 
  • The average workweek rose by 0.1 hours to 34.2 hours for all private nonfarm employees. 
  • Employment has fallen by 7.2 million since the start of the recession in December, 2007.