The job market is finally showing some juice.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday, from 8.1 percent in July, its lowest since January 2009. It is a surprising show of improvement in a job market that had seemed listless in recent months. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one.
Graphic
The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September. A detailed look at the jobs report.
Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought boosted that measure of the job market, as well.
Add it up, and what had seemed to be a summer lull in employment increasingly appears not to have been much of a lull at all.
The timing was fortunate for President Obama’s reelection campaign, with the most closely followed barometer of economic health, the unemployment rate, falling back to the level it was when he started his term.
Appearing buoyant Friday morning, Obama touted the report during a campaign rally at George Mason University in Fairfax. “This morning we found out the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs,” the president said. “Now, every month reminds us we’ve still got too many of our friends and neighbors looking for work, too many middle-class families struggling to pay the bills.”
Republican challenger Mitt Romney sought to attribute the lower jobless rate to people giving up on finding jobs.
“The unemployment rate ... has come down very, very slowly, but it’s come down nonetheless,” Romney said Friday during a rally in Abingdon, Va. “The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work.... If the same share of people were participating in the workforce today as on the day the president got elected, our unemployment rate would be around 11 percent.”
While that headline number — the drop in the unemployment rate — will surely capture the most attention in the final weeks of a hard-fought presidential campaign, the inner details of the labor survey reveal an even rosier picture.
The unemployment rate fell even though more people — 418,000 of them — entered the labor force. That brought the ratio of the American population with a job to its highest level since May 2010. Some 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, and 456,000 fewer reported not having a job but wanting one.
The response in the financial markets was positive but relatively muted, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index up 0.43 percent around 12:30 p.m.
It is important not to place too much weight on one report — although with its timing a month before the election, the September numbers tend to receive more attention than most. But altogether, the new numbers point to an economy that is not in as dire straits as it has seemed for much of the summer.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday, from 8.1 percent in July, its lowest since January 2009. It is a surprising show of improvement in a job market that had seemed listless in recent months. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one.
Graphic
The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September. A detailed look at the jobs report.
Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought boosted that measure of the job market, as well.
Add it up, and what had seemed to be a summer lull in employment increasingly appears not to have been much of a lull at all.
The timing was fortunate for President Obama’s reelection campaign, with the most closely followed barometer of economic health, the unemployment rate, falling back to the level it was when he started his term.
Appearing buoyant Friday morning, Obama touted the report during a campaign rally at George Mason University in Fairfax. “This morning we found out the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs,” the president said. “Now, every month reminds us we’ve still got too many of our friends and neighbors looking for work, too many middle-class families struggling to pay the bills.”
Republican challenger Mitt Romney sought to attribute the lower jobless rate to people giving up on finding jobs.
“The unemployment rate ... has come down very, very slowly, but it’s come down nonetheless,” Romney said Friday during a rally in Abingdon, Va. “The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work.... If the same share of people were participating in the workforce today as on the day the president got elected, our unemployment rate would be around 11 percent.”
While that headline number — the drop in the unemployment rate — will surely capture the most attention in the final weeks of a hard-fought presidential campaign, the inner details of the labor survey reveal an even rosier picture.
The unemployment rate fell even though more people — 418,000 of them — entered the labor force. That brought the ratio of the American population with a job to its highest level since May 2010. Some 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, and 456,000 fewer reported not having a job but wanting one.
The response in the financial markets was positive but relatively muted, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index up 0.43 percent around 12:30 p.m.
It is important not to place too much weight on one report — although with its timing a month before the election, the September numbers tend to receive more attention than most. But altogether, the new numbers point to an economy that is not in as dire straits as it has seemed for much of the summer.