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

Unemployment Rate

• The unemployment rate held steady at 9.1% in August. 
• The number of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) edged down to 6.0 million in August, from 6.2 million in July.  The percent of long-term unemployed fell to 42.9% in August, from 44.4% in July. 
• The labor force rose by 366,000 in August after having declined by 193,000 in July.  The labor force participation rate edged up to 64.0% in August following a new 27-year low of 63.9% in July. 
• There were 14.0 million unemployed persons in August, up slightly from 13.9 million in July.

Payroll Employment

• Total non-farm payroll employment was unchanged (0) in August, following gains of 85,000 in July (downwardly revised from 117,000) and 20,000 in June (downwardly revised 46,000).  The lack of any job gains fell short of expectations for a gain of about 70,000 payroll jobs, and also fell short of the 130,000 to 150,000 new jobs needed to keep up with population growth.  
• Private sector employment rose by 17,000 while government employment fell by 17,000.
• The largest private sector employment gains came from health care (+30,000), mining (+6,000), and professional and business services (+8,000).  The largest losses were in information (-48,000) and government (-17,000). 
• Private sector employment was negatively affected by a strike in the information sector (accounting for a loss of about 45,000 jobs) while government employment was positively affected by the return of workers from a partial government shutdown in Minnesota (accounting for a gain of about 22,000 jobs).
• The average workweek for all private nonfarm employees edged down 0.1 hour to 34.2 hours.

Job Gains by Sector Since the Official Start and Official End of the Recession