Employment Falls

CalculatedRisk provides a nice summary of the September Jobs Report. I suppose the 35 thousand drop in employment per the Payroll Survey (17 thousand drop per the Household Survey) is not as bad as one might have feared given the Katrina effect, which the BLS readily admits is hard to measure. The employment-population ratio fell a bit from 62.9% to 62.8% while the labor force continued to grow with overall population growth (an unchanged labor force participation rate), which translated into an increase in the unemployment rate. Let’s hope this reversal of employment growth is temporary as my read of the labor market is that it continues to fall short of full employment.