Unemployment Drops to 9.1%, 117,000 Jobs Added
August 5th, 2011A day after the largest single-day drop since the recession ended, the economy got a brief moment of good news with the July jobs numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment numbers dropped to 9.1%, thanks in large part to 117,000 new jobs. Also, the May and June job numbers were revised upwards by almost double what the initial figures were for those months. This temporarily sparked a rise in futures this morning before stocks took a tumble earlier today.
The improvements helped industries across the board, with retail and health care jobs reporting the biggest increases, while the government sector shed 37,000 jobs as local, state and federal governments continue to try to get their fiscal houses in order, showing the first bit of good economic news in months.
However, the numbers are also due to the fact that some of the unemployed have stopped looking for work, which takes them out of the labor force, and thus not counted as “unemployed”, which is a downside in an otherwise not-depressing jobs report. Still, markets are showing signs of unease, and if yesterday’s bloodbath is more than just a bad day, the numbers may not stay positive for much longer.
