Employment Update: September 2014

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (link) issued new employment number on October 3. According to the report, the economy added 248,000 jobs in September. BLS also corrected its August figures, upward, by 69,000 jobs. Therefore the net gain, since the last report, has been 317,000.

As a percent of total employment, the Goods-Producing sector represented 13.7 percent of jobs and 11.7 percent of gains since August. The Private Service Producing sector accounted for 70.5 percent of total jobs and 83.5 percent of all gains. Government was 15.1 percent of total jobs and 4.8 percent of gains. So the “action” was all in the Service Producing segment. Within that major category, the top three gainers were Professional and Business Services, Retail Trade, and Leisure and Hospitality; they accounted for 60.2 percent of all gains in September.

The month-by-month chart follows. The orange bar reflects changes made to August numbers in the September report.

Data showing annual results and an annualized projection for 2014 are next:

Last month the 2014 projection was 2.598 million for the year. This month the projection has improve and now stands at 2.732 million.

In May of this year, the economy recovered the loss of 8.663 million jobs lost in the Great Recession. Since then I’ve been tracking recovery of new jobs not created while we were making up losses. To keep up with the growth in the workforce, a number driven by demographics, we need to created 87,300 jobs every month. Once that number is met, anything in excess may be counted against what I’ve labeled the Growth Deficit. That number stood at 6.635 million in April, just before we caught erased the losses created by the Great Recession.

As of July, we had already recovered 7.1 percent of that deficit. The numbers were good enough in September to change that recovery rate to 12.3 percent, as shown in the last graphic:

Employment is headed in the right direction now, but its “quality” is only so-so. The economy is adding service employment, not least temporary positions; those accounted in September for nearly 8 percent of all new jobs created.