Today's employment situation report was abysmal by almost any standards. Yes, we are definitely off the worst levels of the recession and have avoided a collapse into economic chaos, but this report shows that at this point a recovery is not in the immediate future.
September Employment Situation Report
The household survey showed us that not only did the unemployment rate tick up to 9.8% (from 9.7%)and U-6 is up to 17%, but those numbers were essentially raised by a .3% decline in the labor force participation rate. The Household survey also showed a continuing decline in the employment-population ration, which is now down to 58.8. Finally, this part of the report informed us that the long-term unemployed increased by 450,000 last month (that's those unemployed for more than 27 weeks) to 5.4 million.
On the establishment survey side, job losses were reported at 263,000 for September, down from the revised 201,000 lost in August and so far appear to mitigate against any employment success of cash for clunkers. The Establishment survey also displayed decreases in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing work weeks, which comes after some improvement/stabilization in those readings recently.
Overall, this was a terrible report and seems to show that at least for September, a recovery simply isn't happening.
One more note from the report, the annual payroll revision is right now slated for -824,000 jobs (this comes off in January through birth/death), and may make the January number look terrible).