Economy lost 131,000 jobs in July; unemployment rate unchanged at 9.5%
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.