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

Unemployment Rate

• The unemployment rate edged down to 9.0% in October, from 9.1% in September. 
• The number of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) declined to 5.9 million in October, from 6.2 million in September.  The percent of long-term unemployed fell to 42.4% in October, from 44.6% in September. 
• The labor force rose by 181,000 in October, following gains of 423,000 in September and 366,000 in August.  The labor force participation rate held steady at 64.2% in October. 
• The number of unemployed persons edged down to 13.9 million in October, from 14.0 million in September.

Payroll Employment

• Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 80,000 in October, following gains of 158,000 in September (revised upwards from 103,000) and 104,000 in August (revised upwards from 57,000).  The gain of 80,000 was below expectations for a gain of about 100,000 payroll jobs, and fell short of the 130,000 new jobs needed to keep up with population growth.  
  • Private sector employment rose by 104,000 while government employment fell by 24,000.
  • The largest private sector employment gains came from professional and business services (+32,000), leisure and hospitality (+22,000), health care (+12,000), and mining (+6,000).  The largest losses were in government (-24,000) and construction (-20,000). 
  • The average workweek for all private nonfarm employees was unchanged at 34.3 hours.