Insights Into Today’s Employment Report

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released details on the job situation in the U.S. for October. The headlines showed that the unemployment rate fell from 5.9% to 5.8%. What you did not see is what this looks like at an industry sector level.  Here is a breakdown of the unemployment rate for the major industry sectors:

Mining & Logging:  4.5%

Construction:  6.4%

Manufacturing:  4.3%

Wholesale & Retail Trade: 5.1%

Tansportation & Utilities:  4.5%

Information:  4.7%

Finance:  3.6%

Professional & Business Services:  6.5%

Education & Health Services:  4.4%

Leisure & Hospitality:  8.5%

Agriculture:  7.6%

Government:  2.7%

Self-Employed:  3.8%

 

Some other interesting tidbits from the report:

73% of total jobs added in September came from four industry sectors:

Leisure & Hospitality: 52,000 jobs

Education & Health Services: 41,000 jobs

Professional & Business Services (includes Temporary Help): 37,000 jobs

Retail Trade: 27,100 jobs

 

The discouraging part of this tidbit is that three out of four of these industy sectors fall into the lower end of the pay scale:

Leisure & Hospitality: $14.06/hr

Education & Health Services: $24.81/hr

Professional & Business Services: $29.28/hr

Retail Trade: $17.09/hr

For comparison, here is the jobs growth for the three top paying industry sectors:

Utilities ($35.72/hr): 400 jobs

Information: ($34.28/hr): 4,000 jobs lost

Mining & Logging ($31.15/hr):  1,000 jobs

 

 

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