The news from the BLS everyone has been waiting for was released this morning. Things came in weaker than had been anticipated.
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend upward in September, increasing by 96,000, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Over the prior 3 months, payroll employment rose by 103,000 on average.
Some details:
Employment increases in September occurred in financial activities, professional and technical services, and temporary help services...
The information industry continued to shed jobs in September (-12,000).
Most of the over-the-month job loss occurred in telecommunications (-9,000);
employment in this industry is down by 302,000 since its most recent peak in
March 2001.Within the goods-producing sector, manufacturing employment edged down in
September (-18,000), with small job losses occurring throughout the durable
and nondurable goods components of the industry. Manufacturing had added
88,000 jobs in the previous 7 months, with most of the gains registered from
March through May. Construction employment was about unchanged in September
and has shown little growth since May.
It is not clear what effect the unusual September weather might have had on the employment measure.
Four hurricanes struck the U.S. during August and September: Charley in mid-August, Frances early in September, Ivan in mid- September, and Jeanne late in the month. BLS made additional data collection efforts for the hurricane-affected counties. Establishment survey response rates in September were within the normal range for these areas as well as for the U.S. as a whole.
For weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll employment, people have to be off work for an entire pay period and not be paid for the time missed. While some employed persons were off payrolls during the survey reference period because of the hurricane effects, some jobs were added as part of recovery efforts. It is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of this unusual string of severe weather events on the payroll employment data for September.
On the plus side, the BLS also announced it looks like estimates of employment growth over the year will eventually be revised upward.
Preliminary tabulations for the first quarter 2004 indicate that the March 2004 total nonfarm payroll employment estimate will be revised upward by approximately 236,000 or 0.2 percent. Over the past decade, benchmark revisions have averaged 0.3 percent. The benchmark will be released on February 4, 2005 with the release of January 2005 data. Benchmark revisions are a standard part of the payroll survey estimation process. The benchmark adjustment represents a once-a-year re-anchoring, based on March data, of sample-based employment estimates to full population counts available through unemployment insurance (UI) tax records filed by nearly all employers with State Employment Security agencies.