Job growth in positive numbers for 19th consecutive month in a row

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

While the world's economy waits to see what Europe does to address the Euro financial crisis, which could push the world's economy into a recession shortly, we at least have positive job growth numbers in September for the 19th consecutive month in a row. Steve Benen reports at the Political Animal – Jobs picture improves — a little:

Expectations going into the morning were low. Neil Irwin reported yesterday, “Analysts are expecting the data to reveal continued mediocrity — 50,000 net new jobs…. And in this age of diminished expectations, a positive number in the 100,000 range … would mean a big positive surprise.”

The new jobs numbers aren’t great, but they did reach six digits.

As an increasing number of economists have warned in recent weeks of a double dip back into recession, employers added 103,000 jobs in September, staving off the bleakest forecasts for now.

The unemployment rate for September was the same as August, 9.1 percent. 

There’s one key detail that shouldn’t be overlooked: the Verizon strike in August that skewed last month’s numbers in the wrong direction by 45,000 jobs were added to the September totals. In other words, the overall total was 103,000 jobs for the month, but if one excludes the Verizon numbers, it’s really 58,000 jobs gained in September.

And that’s obviously not a good number.

In keeping with recent trends, the private sector gained 137,000 jobs in September, which certainly doesn’t sound recessionary, while the public sector lost 34,000 jobs due entirely to budget cuts at the state and local level. Republicans are eager to force more public-sector layoffs, making the jobs landscape worse on purpose, while President Obama’s American Jobs Act seeks to do the opposite.

Also note, it was slightly more encouraging to see that both of the last two months saw their numbers revised upwards, with July and August adding a combined 99,000 previously unreported jobs.

Over the last year, the U.S. economy has added 1.49 million jobs overall.

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Today’s jobs report exceeded expectations, but just to keep up with population growth, the economy should be adding over 150,000 jobs a month. To bring down the unemployment rate quickly, we’d look for 300,000 jobs a month or more.

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And with that, here’s the homemade chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession.

 Steve Benen continues at the Political Animal – Private-sector hiring shows some improvement:

Businesses added 137,000 jobs in September, while 34,000 jobs were lost in the public sector at the same time, thanks to budget cuts at the state and local level.

Those are, by the way, budget cuts Republicans are desperate to expand, making the jobs landscape worse on purpose, while President Obama’s American Jobs Act seeks to do the opposite.

While 137,000 private-sector jobs is hardly cause for celebration, the totals do offer at least mild hints of progress. The figure exceeded expectations; it was more than triple the previous month’s totals; and it does not point in a recessionary direction. For that matter, the revised private-sector totals from July and August were both revised upwards, which was also encouraging.

Over the last year, the U.S. private sector has now added 1.77 million jobs.

We still need to do much better than this, but given dire predictions about a jobs picture that seemed likely to deteriorate further, it’s at least good to see a slight turnaround in the right direction, even if it was modest. [Note 19 consecutive months of growth.]

And with that, here’s a different homemade chart, showing monthly job losses/gains in the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.