The full report can be seen here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm
According to the Labor Department, total U.S. private-sector employment grew by 67,000 positions in August, the eighth consecutive month of job growth. Total U.S. employment fell by 54,000 positions after factoring in government jobs, including 114,000 temporary census workers who were let go. The unemployment rate rose from 9.5 to 9.6 percent, driven mostly by an increase in people who completed temporary work—including census workers—and new entrants, people looking for their first job. In total, nearly three quarters of a million private-sector jobs have been added to the U.S. economy this year.
At last, meaningful improvement is being seen in the length of unemployment. The average length of unemployment has fallen since June from 35.2 to 33.6 weeks. The total number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more has fallen from 6.8 million in May to 6.3 million in August.
Year-over-year, the management, professional and related occupations unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent from 5.4 percent. The improvement, however, is tempered by a decline of a little over a million workers using the classification, about a 2 percent reduction. Conversely, production occupations have seen the most dramatic year-over-year improvement with unemployment falling from 15.1 to 11.6 percent. Total workers using the classification grew by about 300,000. A large part of this strength likely comes from the automotive industry, which while traditionally shutting down for a month in the summer to retool, did not do so this year because of high demand.
In an interesting, yet not immediately explainable turn of events, the participation rate of those with four-year college degrees over the last three months has dropped from 77.3 to 75.8 percent. This may be the clearest indication yet of the effect of baby boomer retirement and their exodus from the labor market. Such drops in participation have not been seen among workers with lower levels of academic achievement, whose retirements presumably will be delayed further than college graduates.
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