The BLS has released the monthly report.

The Household survey (which is based on a survey of the general population) was down 340,000 while the establishment survey (a survey of businesses) showed a drop of 4,000 (ie. is essentially flat). Remember that 150,000 is about the break even point based on population growth. June and July estimates were both revised downwards which is unusual, the recent pattern having been mostly for upwards revisions. The pattern of job losses and gains should be familiar - manufacturing continues to take it on the chin, losing 46,000 last month and having lost 300,000 over the last year. Construction continues to fall, losing 22k for the month and 413,000 since last August.

Meanwhile Health and Social Services gained 49,000, and for the last year 368,000. Education picked up 13,800 and 461,000 over the year.

The pattern is fairly clear - protected industries like health care and education are where the job growth is, as it has been (along with construction and related industries) for most of the 00's. Manufacturing, which is subject to competition from nations with major export subsidies through currency manipulation, continues its long decline. And thanks to the housing market crash, construction, which was the job engine of this cycle, is now losing workers (and I strongly suspect that due to the BLS Birth/Death model, which is backwards looking and thus tends to overstate employment going into recessions, and understate it going out is still, even after the downward revisions, showing less job losses in the industry than are actually occuring.)

The Comissioner's statement is rather slithery, and attempts to use averages and so on to conceal the decline in the Household stats. For example:

Total employment, as measured by the household survey, has been flat thus far in 2007. The employment-population ratio was 62.8 percent in August, 0.6 percentage point lower than in December.

Uh huh. True enough. What he doesn't say is that, well, last month the Household number dropped 340,000. If you just read the release you would be forgiven for thinking it was essentially flat. In other words, it's deliberately misleading.

Overall this is an employment report which implies the US is sliding into recession. The Fed has dumped significant stimulus into the economy if one looks at the yield curve, and the administration is encouraging re-inflation of the housing bubble while asking Congress for another 50 billion of fiscal stimulus on top of the 147 billion they already received. 197 billion is a lot of stimulus, so I wouldn't be surprised to see numbers jump back up in the late fall as the hit hits the zombie economy and shocks it back to some semblance of life. At that point numbers should push back into the 100 to 150K range, if the stimulus works. It should, unless the housing crash really gathers steam, especially as I also expect Bernanke to cut rates again. We'll see.