Advance copies of this statement are made available to the press
under lock-up conditions with the explicit understanding that the
data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
                                
                          Statement of

                           Keith Hall
                          Commissioner
                   Bureau of Labor Statistics

                     Friday, October 7, 2011
                                

     Nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000 in September,
in part due to the return of about 45,000 telecommunications
workers following a strike in August.  The unemployment rate
remained at 9.1 percent.
     
     Since April, payroll employment has increased by an average
of 72,000 per month, compared with an average increase of 161,000
for the prior 7 months.  As in recent months, September job gains
were concentrated in a few major private-sector industries, while
government employment continued to trend down.
     
     Health care employment increased by 44,000, with job gains
in both ambulatory health care services and hospitals.  Over the
past 12 months, the health care industry has added 336,000 jobs.
     
     Employment in professional and business services increased
by 48,000 in September.  Small job gains occurred in a number of
component industries, including temporary help services, computer
systems design, and management and technical consulting.
     
     Within the information industry, telecommunications
employment was up in September; however, the increase resulted
from the return of about 45,000 workers to their jobs following a
strike in August.
     
     In the goods-producing sector, employment in construction
increased by 26,000 over the month with nearly all the gain among
the nonresidential industries, which includes heavy and civil
construction.  Since February, construction employment had shown
little movement.  Mining employment continued to trend up in
September.  Elsewhere in the private sector, employment was
little changed.
     
     Government employment continued to trend down.  Local
government employment declined by 35,000 over the month.  Since
September 2008, employment in local government has fallen by
535,000.  The U.S. Postal Service lost 5,000 jobs over the month.
     
     Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm
payrolls rose by 4 cents in September, offsetting a decline of
the same size in August.  Over the past 12 months, average hourly
earnings have risen by 1.9 percent.  From August 2010 to August
2011, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)
increased by 3.8 percent.
     
     Turning to measures from the survey of households, the
unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in September, unchanged over
the month.  Since April, the jobless rate has held in a narrow
range from 9.0 to 9.2 percent.  Of the 14.0 million persons
unemployed in September, 44.6 percent had been jobless for 27
weeks or more.
     
     The labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the
employment-population ratio, at 58.3 percent, were little changed
in September.  Among the employed, the number of persons working
part-time for economic reasons rose by 444,000 to 9.3 million.
     
     In summary, nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000
in September, in part reflecting the return of about 45,000
telecommunications workers from a strike.  The unemployment rate
held at 9.1 percent and has shown little change since April.