U.S. Economy Sheds 95,000 in September

Apologies for the gloomy reports today, but this jobs report was not welcomed news. Greg Robb at MarketWatch breaks down the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The U.S. economy lost 95,000 nonfarm jobs in September as local and state governments shed positions at a faster rate than the private sector was adding, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The drop of 95,000 was much wider than the 8,000 decline expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch, and the 57,000 jobs lost in August.

The nation’s unemployment rate remained steady at 9.6% as fewer new workers joined the labor market than in the previous month. Economists had expected a slight increase in the jobless rate.

Private-sector payrolls rose by 64,000 in September. Private payrolls increased a revised 93,000 in August, up from the 67,000 initially estimated.

Still, the private-payrolls growth for September came in weaker than the increase of 85,000 that by economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected.

The payrolls count in July and August was revised lower by a cumulative 15,000. Payrolls fell a revised 57,000 in July and by 66,000 in August.

For those who are interested, Bill McBridge at Calculated Risk Blog does a great job in diving down past the headlines into a detailed analysis of the data. Check out his series of posts here, here, here and here.

There is one particularly disturbing fact he takes note of:

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose by 612,000 over the month to 9.5 million. Over the past 2 months, the number of such workers has increased by 943,000. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. The number of workers only able to find part time jobs (or have had their hours cut for economic reasons) was at 9.472 million in September, up sharply from August.

This is a new record high, and is obviously bad news.

These workers are included in the alternate measure of labor underutilization (U-6) that increased to 17.1% in September from 16.7% in August. The high for U-6 was 17.4% in October 2009. Grim.

I'm sorry to agree with him. This is grim news indeed.