Quarter Million Jobs Lost In July

The latest jobs report came out today. 247,000 jobs where lost in July; this number could be upwardly revised in the coming months. Economists had expected 320,000 job cuts.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined by .2 percentage points in July to 65.5%. People who drop out of the labor force because they can't find work are not included in the unemployment number.

A normal U.S. economy would be producing at least 125,000 per month. Australia, with a population about 7% as large as the U.S. added 32,200 jobs last month. That would be the equivalent of the United States adding over 400,000 jobs in a month. However, 247,000 jobs were lost in July. This is an improvement in the rate of decline from June when 443,000 jobs were lost. So things are still getting worse in the U.S. just at a slower rate.

Some good news in the report, "In July, the average workweek of production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by 0.1 hour to 33.1 hours."

By sector in July:

Construction -76,000 jobs
Manufacturing -52,000 jobs
Retail Trade -44,000 jobs
Professor and Business Services -38,000 jobs
Transportation and Warehousing -22,000 jobs
Financial Activities -13,000 jobs
Health Care +20,000 jobs (only segment that gained).