Friday, October 3, 2014

Non-farm payrolls up 249,000 in September, unemployment down to 5.9%

Fresh electrons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: the national unemployment rate was down 0.2% to 5.9% for the month of September. Non-farm payrolls were up 249,000, which is exciting. The broader U6 unemployment rate was also down 0.2% to 11.8%.

The chemical manufacturing subsector was down 900 jobs to 803,800 positions.

The unemployment rate of college graduates 25 and older was 2.9%, down 0.3% from August. The unemployment rate of non-high school graduates was 8.4%, down 0.7%.

Considering that 2nd quarter GDP was up 4.6%, I think this is a reasonably solid sign that things are looking up for the rest of the year. Of course, there's always portents of DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM around the corner (ISIS, Ebola, etc), but let's hope that the rest of the economic year is pretty good.

*thanks to an astute reader for headline typo correction

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20