The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data on the August employment situation today. Highlights of today’s employment situation report: – 169,000 new payroll jobs were created in August. July’s job gains were revised up to 242,000 from an earlier estimate of 207,000. – Twenty-seven consecutive months of job gains have added over 4.1 million new jobs to payrolls. – Payroll employment has increased by over 2.2 million over the year and over 1.5 million new payroll jobs have been created so far this year. – The unemployment rate (calculated from the household survey of employment) edged down to 4.9% in August, from 5.0% in July. Last August, the unemployment rate was 5.4%. – The unemployment rate is the lowest since September 11, 2001 and remains below the averages of each of the past 3 decades. Today’s employment situation release can be seen at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
