Unemployment Rate Falls to 7.9% But Jobs Recovered Slow By More Than Half, to 661,000

The national economy returned 661,000 jobs to the workplace in September, less than half the 1.5 million added in August, as the pace of the recovery slowed and the unemployment rate fell to 7.9 percent, from 8.4 percent the previous month. Personal income flattened in August and spending slowed as unemployed Americans lost their supplemental federal unemployment benefits.

But the unemployment rate does not count 7.2 million people who want a job but are not actively looking for work, which means they’re not counted as unemployed. If that group of people were counted in the unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 12.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates the so-called alternative measure of labor utilitzation. That figure also includes the under-employed–those who are employed part-time involuntarily, because they couldn’t find full-time work or because their hours were cut back.




The economy lost 22 million jobs in March and April as the nation shut down due to the coronavirus. It has so far regained more than half those jobs in what has been a relatively swift recovery despite September’s slowdown. But consumers’ reluctance to spend and travel, to patronize restaurants and tourist attractions, is leading to layoffs and business closures: the number of people who lost jobs permanently rose by 345,000 to 3.8 million in September, up from 3.4 million in August and 2.9 million in July, and up from 1.3 million a year ago.

The number of those regaining jobs they’d lost due to the pandemic was 2.1 million in September, the same number as in August, while the number of new entrants into the workplace–first-time job holders–was 537,000, down from 673,000 a year ago. Among those who lost jobs in September, 37 percent are on temporary layoff, 36 percent are on permanent layoffs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The September unemployment report is the last before the Nov. 3 election. President Trump–who announced today he had contracted covid-19–has hinged his reelection chances on the strength of the economy. The current unemployment rate is 2.1 percentage points below its peak during the Great Recession of 2008, and not quite half where it was at its peak in April. Some 151.8 million people held jobs four years ago, in September 2016. Employment was at 147.6 million in September, 4.2 million below the mark four years ago.

In September whites (7 percent) and Asians (8.9 percent) saw improvements in their unemployment rates, but teenagers (15.9 percent), Blacks (12.1) and Hispanics (10.3) saw little change. The pandemic has affected women employment in particular, with women’s participation rate in the labor force dropping from 56.1 percent to 55.6 percent, the lowest level in 33 years.