Today's Bureau of Labor Statistics Report; Management, professional and related occupation's unemployment rate rose just a tenth of a point to 3.3%

Extract:


The management, professional and related occupations unemployment rate, which includes non-government white-collar excluding sales and administrative positions rose a tenth of a point to 3.3 percent in December

January 9, 2009

To: MRINetwork Owners
From: Seamus Kelleher, Director of PR and Internal Communications
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Report (January 2009)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its employment numbers for the month of December this morning. We asked Kitchen PR to put together a short summary and analysis of the numbers. >

An Analysis of Today's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Report >

The full report can be seen here: http://cl.exct.net/?ju=fe5c1276736404757010&ls=fe2613797260067f751678&m=fef417747c670c&l=fecd157272660679&s=fe3615707464067c721178&jb=ffcf14&t=or the attached PDF. >

According to the U.S. Labor Department this morning, seasonally adjusted, the United States lost 524,000 positions in December, bringing the employed workforce to just shy of 135.5 million, a level last seen in early 2006. While by no means a positive number, it is on the better side of analyst estimates, which were as bad as 700,000. It is also a deceleration from the 584,000 lost in November, the first such deceleration in nearly six months. Unemployment rose to 7.2 from 6.8 percent, a higher than anticipated jump. >

roportionally, more of the job losses occurred in the goods producing sector than the service-providing sector. Goods shed 1.2 percent of its workforce while services shed only .2 percent. Professional and business services, a subcategory of services that includes most non-government white-collar positions, lost 113,000 positions or .6 percent. Education and health services remained the primary sector adding positions, 45,000, with government adding just 7,000. >

The management, professional and related occupations unemployment rate, which includes non-government white-collar excluding sales and administrative positions rose a tenth of a point to 3.3 percent in December. >

Yesterday, unemployment initial (UI) claims for the week ending January 3 fell to a seasonally adjusted 467,000, below the UI's 4-week average, which fell to 525,750 claims. >


***********************************************************************
This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.