Unemployment rate finally goes under 8%

The Labor Department has determined that the nation’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.8% last month. That’s the lowest it’s been since January of 2009. A total of 104,000 payroll jobs were added in addition to the 181,000 jobs in July and 142,000 jobs in August. There are of course discrepancies in this data. Current reports show that more than 6% of available jobs are only part time. Overall the underemployment rate, the percentage of the population holding part-time or temporary jobs, remained the same, well over 14%. Reactions to the report were thoroughly mixed. “It’s still not booming or extraordinarily robust,” said Dean Maki, the New York-based chief U.S. economist at Barclays Plc.  But it is a labor market that we expect to continue to be firm enough to push the unemployment rate lower.” Carl Camden, president and chief executive officer at temporary- staff provider Kelly Services Inc., had a less enthusiastic perspective, “We were seeing good signs of a fairly solid recovery. But all of that is definitely slowed and you see that in staffing volumes around the world.” The drop in unemployment is a consequence of ongoing growth especially over the last few months, not from any sudden, dramatic spike in hiring rates.