Payroll employment increases by 248,000 in September; unemployment rate declines to 5.9%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- SEPTEMBER 2014
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 248,000 in September, and the
unemployment rate declined to 5.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services,
retail trade, and health care.
Household Survey Data
In September, the unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 5.9
percent. The number of unemployed persons decreased by 329,000 to 9.3 million.
Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were
down by 1.3 percentage points and 1.9 million, respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, unemployment rates declined in September for
adult men (5.3 percent), whites (5.1 percent), and Hispanics (6.9 percent). The
rates for adult women (5.5 percent), teenagers (20.0 percent), and blacks (11.0
percent) showed little change over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was
4.3 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.
(See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary
jobs decreased by 306,000 in September to 4.5 million. The number of long-term
unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 3.0
million in September. These individuals accounted for 31.9 percent of the unemployed.
Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed is down by 1.2 million.
(See tables A-11 and A-12.)
Read more: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
[link: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/10/03/september-jobs-report-everything-you-need-to-know/|September Jobs Report: Everything You Need to Know]
Markets
8:00 am ET
Oct 3, 2014
{by Steven Russolillo and Paul Vigno, and probably a few others}
— Associated Press
Yes, it’s that time again, folks. Jobs Friday, when for one ever-so-brief moment the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Main Street are all aligned on one thing: Jobs.
A fresh update on the U.S. employment situation for September hits the wires at 8:30 a.m. New York time, offering one of the most important snapshots on how the economy fared last month. Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires expect 215,000 new jobs were created — up from 142,000 jobs added in August — with the unemployment rate sticking at 6.1%.
Here at MoneyBeat HQ, we’ll be offering color commentary and tracking the markets before and after the data crosses the wires. Feel free to weigh-in yourself, via the comments section. And while you’re here, why don’t you sign up to follow us on Twitter.
Enjoy the show.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Good morning, Freepers and DUers alike. I especially welcome our good friends from across the aisle. You're paying for this information too, so feel free to participate in this thread. Please, everyone, put aside your differences long enough to digest the information. After that, you can engage in your usual donnybrook.
If you don't have the time to study the report thoroughly, here is the news in a nutshell:
Commissioner's Statement on The Employment Situation
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jec.nr0.htm
What is important about these statistics is not so much this month’s number, but the trend. So let’s look at some earlier numbers.
ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in September 2014:
ADP National Employment Report Shows 213,000 Jobs Added in September
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014907710
Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in August 2014 (hat tip, Garion 55):
Payroll employment increases in August (+142,000); unemployment rate changes little (6.1%)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014888738
ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in August 2014:
ADP National Employment Report Shows 204,000 Jobs Added in August
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014887794
Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in July 2014:
Payroll employment increases in July (+209,000); unemployment rate changes little (6.2%)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014860280
ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in July 2014:
ADP National Employment Report Shows 218,000 Jobs Added in July
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014858666
Here’s a grim thought:
Fed economists: America’s missing workers are not coming back
http://www.democraticunderground.com/111658923
Dissenters, take note:
A New Reason to Question the Official Unemployment Rate
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/upshot/a-new-reason-to-question-the-official-unemployment-rate.html
David Leonhardt
AUG. 26, 2014
The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report has been the subject of some wacky conspiracy theories. None was wackier than the suggestion from Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief executive, that government statisticians were exaggerating job growth during President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Both Republican and Democratic economists dismissed those charges as silly.
But to call the people who compile the jobs report honest, nonpartisan civil servants is not to say that the jobs report is perfect. The report tries to estimate employment in a big country – and to do so quickly, to give policy makers, business executives and everyone else a sense of how the economy is performing. It’s a tough task.
And it has become tougher, because Americans are less willing to respond to surveys than they used to be.
A new academic paper suggests that the unemployment rate appears to have become less accurate over the last two decades, in part because of this rise in nonresponse. In particular, there seems to have been an increase in the number of people who once would have qualified as officially unemployed and today are considered out of the labor force, neither working nor looking for work.
A few more things:
Meet FRED, every wonk’s secret weapon
FRED stands for Federal Reserve Economic Data. It serves as an online clearinghouse for a wealth of numbers: unemployment rates, prices of goods, GDP and CPI, things common and obscure. Today, FRED is more than a little bit famous, thanks to the public’s fascination with economic data.
Federal Reserve Economic Data
So how many jobs must be created every month to have an effect on the unemployment rate? There's an app for that:
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Jobs Calculator™
Here's an index to the monthly reports:
Monthly Employment Reports
The large print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
A DU'er pointed out several months ago that, if I'm going to post the link to the press release, I should include the link to all the tables that provide additional ways of examining the data. Specifically, I should post a link to Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization. Table A-15 includes those who are not considered unemployed, on the grounds that they have become discouraged about the prospects of finding a job and have given up looking. Here are those links.
Employment Situation
Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization
= new reply since forum marked as read
Yeah....
I heard this morning that the major shipping companies (notsbly UPS) had put out a call to retailers to not wait to the last minute for their best sale prices this coming holoiday season in order to allow them be able to deliver stuff on time. I would hope that these shippers also consider more hiring as well - notably because so much is being bought online (even from local businesses selling online as well).
Republicans 
