America’s employers added 661,000 new workers in September – reducing the unemployment rate to 7.9% in September, down from 8.4% in August, the Labor Department said Friday. Since April, the rate has tumbled from 14.7%. But last month’s drop in joblessness does not reflect a surge in hiring.
Instead, the figures show a drop in the number of people seeking jobs. Keep in mind that the government does not count people as unemployed if they aren’t actively looking for a job. Actually, the dip in the number of unemployed was driven by people leaving the workforce.
The jobs report showed that women in their prime working years are quitting their jobs and leaving the workforce at much higher rates than men, a sign that remote schooling may be pushing many women to stay home. According to NPR.org, women left the workforce in September at four times the rate that men did.
“Women continue to bear the brunt of this recession,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “They are supervising at-home schooling.”
The unemployment rate among Latinos was 10.3 percent, down from 10.5 percent the previous month, while the rate for African Americans was 12.1 percent, down from 13 percent in August. The jobless rate for Asian Americans fell to 8.9 percent. The jobless rate for white Americans dropped from 7.3 percent to 7 percent, according to Reuters.
The government is touting the jobs report as painting a picture of continuing economic recovery, however, job gains have declined in each of the last three months, showcasing an economic recovery that is starting to lose momentum.
“There seems to be a worrisome loss of momentum,” said Drew Matus, an economist at MetLife Investment Management, per the Associated Press. “There’s a lot of caution on the part of employers.”
There are several factors that are influencing the labor report, including temporary layoffs that are becoming permanent, businesses folding or taking bankruptcy, fears of a second wave of the coronavirus, and the lack of a vaccine. And of course, the recent layoffs of thousands of employees in the airline industry, along with state and local government job cuts, among others, did not make it into the jobs report.
