Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. October's drop in payroll employment followed declines of 127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised. Employment has fallen by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred in the past 3 months. In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction, and several service-providing industries. Health care and mining continued to add jobs.
Let's look at this in a bit more detail.
-- The unemployment rate increased by .4%. That's a huge increase
-- The economy has lost 1.2 million jobs in the last 10 months. The best reading of job growth for the latest expansion is 7,177,000 total jobs. That means that in the last 10 months we've lost 17% of the total number of jobs we've created during this expansion.
-- Job losses are accelerating: over half of the jobs lost in the last 10 months have occurred in the last 3 months.
There is nothing good in this report.
