The national Unemployment Rate in September 2017 was 4.2%, a fall of 0.2 percent, compared to the previous month. In aggregate, there were a little over 33,000 jobs reduced from the economy during this month. The negative impact of Hurricane Harvey and Irma could be felt in industries such as food services and drinking places which registered a negative growth.
By the end of September 2017, the number of unemployed persons declined by about 331,000 to 6.8 million.
Unemployment Rate among Major Workers Groups
- Adult Men – 3.9%
- Adult Women – 3.9%
- Teenagers – 12.9%
All the categories above recorded a positive growth during the month, both in comparison to the previous month and to the same period in 2016.
Unemployment Rate among Ethnic Groups
- Blacks – 7.0%
- Asians – 3.7%
- Whites – 3.7%
- Hispanics – 5.1%
In the categorization based on ethnicity, the jobless rates among Blacks saw a considerable decline of 0.7% from the last month. All other groups recorded negligible decline.
General Highlights
- Those falling into the category of long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or more) witnessed a marginal decline during this month. It stood at 1.7 million, covering 25.5 percent of the unemployed persons.
- The number of people who worked part-time for economic reasons was 5.1 million. People falling under this category wanted to work full-time but were employed part-time since their hours were cut or could not find full-time hours, both due to involuntary reasons.
- In the category of marginally attached to the labor force, a little over 1.6 million persons were tagged under this. Since people falling under this segment had not looked for employment in 4 weeks before the survey, they were not considered as “unemployed”.
Employment Data in Various Industries (Top Highlights)
1) As an after-effect of the hurricanes, a little over 105,000 jobs were lost in the food services and drinking places. On an average, this industry has added 24,000 jobs per month over the last 112 months.
2) At +23,000, Health Care added the highest number of jobs among all categories during September 2017. In the last 12 months, it has gained an average of 27,000 jobs per month.
3) Transportation and warehousing were the second highest grosser at +22,000 jobs followed by financial activities that clocked +10,000 jobs during September.
Other Highlights
- The average workweek for all employees was 34.4 hours, the same as the previous month.
- The manufacturing workweek was 40.7 hours, unchanged from the previous month. The overtime was 3.3 hours.
- The average hourly earnings for all employees was $26.55, up by 12 cents from August 2017.
- With an increase of 9 cents, the average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees in the private sector were $22.23.