Employment Figures Strong in August

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