The monthly employment situation report came out this morning. Payrolls declined by 216,000, after a 247,000 drop in July (note, June and July losses were revised up 49,000 combined). The unemployment rate moved from 9.4% to 9.7%. The Bloomberg consensus range for payrolls was -365,000 to -115,000, with the consensus coming in at -200,000. It looks like the people surveyed by Bloomberg are getting a bit more optimistic. Unlike last month’s report, only 143,000 people left the labor force. To me, this adds credibility to the numbers.

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in August (-216,000), and the unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Although job losses continued in many of the major industry sectors in August, the declines have moderated in recent months.

In August, the number of unemployed persons increased by 466,000 to 14.9 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.3 percentage point to 9.7 percent. The rate had been little changed in June and July, after in- creasing 0.4 or 0.5 percentage point in each month from December 2008 through May. Since the recession began in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 7.4 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 4.8 percentage points.

This news is being treated as great news by certain sources, because the losses are being reported as back to pre-crisis levels. This assertion, however, is not true, as we need a loss of less than 200,000 to get to the loss rate that looked like a steady level at the begining of the crisis (see this graph and look at the jagged loss line that dominated the first half of 2008). Having argued that, this is still a better report than the previous ones.

The best measure of underemployment has had an unfortunate rise. The U-6 number from Table A-12, the alternative measures of labor underutilization (BLS term). The number increased from 16.3% to 16.8%.

We are getting there, but we’re not there yet.