WASHINGTON — Unemployment remained at 6.1% in September, as businesses cut 159,000 nonfarm jobs, the Department of Labor reported today.
The economy has lost 760,000 jobs this year.
The number of job losses was a dramatic increase from the 84,000 losses in August. It was the 9th consecutive month of job losses.
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The number of persons unemployed in September remained at 9.5 million. But during the past year, the number of unemployed has increased by 2.2 million and the unemployment rate has grown by 1.4%.
Wage growth also remained sluggish, Average hourly earnings grew 3 cents, or 0.02%. That compares to an increase of 8 cents in August.
As in August, employment increased in education, government, health care and mining while it decreased in manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services.
The manufacturing sector cut 51,000 jobs, bringing the one-year total losses in that area to 442,000. There was a decline of 41,000 jobs in the retail sector, bringing the 12-month total decline to 250,000.
The number of people who worked part time out of necessity–because they could not find full-time–rose by 337,000 to 6.1 million, a 1.6 million increase in the last 12 months.
This was the second piece of bad news on the job front this week. On Thursday, the department reported that weekly jobless claims rose 1,000 to 497,000 last week, the highest since just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
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