There were 528,000 jobs added in July, and the unemployment rate was at 3.5%.
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• First, as of July there 32 thousand more jobs than in February 2020 (the month before the pandemic).
This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms. As of July 2022, all of the jobs have returned.
This doesn’t include the preliminary benchmark revision that showed there were 462 thousand more jobs than originally reported in March 2022.
• ADP Report: The ADP employment report showed 132,000 private sector jobs were added in September. This is the first release of ADP’s new methodology, and this suggests a weaker than expected employment report.
• ISM Surveys: Note that the ISM services are diffusion indexes based on the number of firms hiring (not the number of hires). The ISM® manufacturing employment index increased in August to 54.2%, up from 49.9% last month. This would suggest about 5,000 jobs added in manufacturing.
The ISM® services employment index has not yet been released.
• Unemployment Claims: The weekly claims report showed an increase in the number of initial unemployment claims during the reference week (includes the 12th of the month) from 261,000 in July to 245,000 in August. This would usually suggest fewer layoffs in August than in July. In general, weekly claims were lower than expectations in August.