Private Sector Jobs Grew Last Month

The September employment numbers are out, and for consumers worried about the economy, they may be more important for what they don't say than what they do say.

The headline number on the Labor Department's September report shows payrolls grew last month by 103,000 jobs but the unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent.

A further look at the numbers show the 103,000 net gain in jobs is a combination of 137,000 new private sector jobs and the loss of 34,000 government jobs. With governments still facing deficits, it's not surprising that government payrolls are being reduced. It's encouraging that the private sector is at last showing growth.

Economists say the economy must produce more than 103,000 thousand jobs a month to bring down the unemployment rate but, at the moment, any job growth has to be seen as at least slightly encouraging. After all, with the European debt crisis threatening to throw the world into a recession, any growth at all has to be viewed as a positive.

Payrolls growing

“Businesses continue to add workers and it is hard to see how we could be in recession if payrolls are growing,” said economist Joel Naroff, of Naroff Economic Advisors, in Holland, Pa. “A strong gain was posted in the construction sector as nonresidential activity picked up solidly. Let?s wait to see if this is a trend.”

Retail, telecommunications, health care and professional services all were up all were hiring last month. On the downside, manufacturing finance, transportation and wholesaling were down. In the government worker category, the biggest cuts came in education, which seems odd since September was the month school resumed across the country.

One other encouraging sign last month was an increase in the number of people looking for jobs. That's always a sign of growing confidence, and signs of confidence have been hard to find lately. So, maybe things are not as bad as recent headlines have made them out?

“The sky is not falling just yet,” Naroff said.