FOR DELIVERY: 9:30 A.M., E.D.T.
                            FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1996


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

Katharine G. Abraham
Commissioner
Bureau of Labor Statistics

Friday, October 4, 1996





	Good morning. I am pleased to have this opportunity to 
comment on the employment and unemployment data released 
this morning.
	Nonfarm payroll employment was virtually unchanged in 
September after seven months of steady growth.  The 
unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent, also was little changed 
over the month. 
	Manufacturing employment fell by 57,000 in September, 
with losses spread through most of the component 
industries. Employment in transportation equipment fell by 
12,000, mostly because of losses in automobile 
manufacturing; industrial machinery also lost 11,000 jobs.  
In nondurable goods manufacturing, food processing lost 
7,000 jobs.  Losses in this industry have been accelerating 
in recent months.  Employment in printing and publishing 
also continued to decline, falling by 5,000.
	Elsewhere in the goods-producing sector, growth in 
construction was weak, owing in part to losses in heavy 
construction in the wake of hurricane Fran.  Mining 
employment resumed its long-term downward trend.
	In the service-producing sector, government employment 
fell by 81,000 over the month, due largely to a decline of 
67,000 in local education.  This decline partly offset 
unusually large gains recorded over the summer.  Local 
education is an industry in which there are large seasonal 
swings in employment over the course of the year.  Due to 
changes in school schedules, there were larger returns to 
payrolls prior to September this year than were expected by 
our seasonal factors.  This accounts for the large 
increases, on a seasonally adjusted basis, in local 
education employment over the summer and for this month’s 
sharp decline. Taking a longer view, local education 
employment was up by 157,000 compared to its year-ago 
level.  The long-term decline in federal government 
employment continued in September.
	Employment growth in services, which continued to slow 
in September, was only 54,000.  This is less than half of 
this industry’s average monthly increase during the first 
half of 1996.  Smaller-than-usual increases in the help 
supply component of business services and a decline in 
private educational services contributed to the overall 
weakness.  On the other hand, health services, which grew 
by 30,000 over the month, improved after 3 months of slow 
growth.  Half of the increase in health services was in 
hospitals.  Motion pictures and engineering and management 
services both were quite strong.
	Retail trade was sluggish for the second straight 
month.  Employment in eating and drinking places rose by 
15,000, and there were smaller increases in building 
materials stores, auto dealers and service stations, and 
furniture and home furnishings.  Employment declined, 
however, in general merchandise, apparel, and miscellaneous 
retail stores.
	Average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory 
workers on nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.2 hour to 34.7 
hours in September.  The factory workweek edged up by a 
tenth of an hour to 41.8 hours.  Average hourly earnings 
rose by 6 cents and were up by 3.5 percent over the year.
Before moving on to the data from the household 
survey, I would like to call your attention to a technical 
correction that affects the payroll employment numbers 
presented in this month’s news release.  During the 
preparation of the data for September, we identified a 
coding error in the X-12 ARIMA computer program that has 
been used since June to seasonally adjust the data from our 
establishment survey.   The seasonally adjusted employment 
data for August and September released today have been 
produced using corrected factors.  We are in the process of 
recalculating all of the employment series from March 
through July and the hours and earnings data from March 
through September, and plan to release the revised data 
series on October 18.
Although we are making these corrections in the 
interest of ensuring that our published series provide as 
clear a picture of recent trends as possible, I would note 
that the error we have discovered had only a very small 
effect on our historical estimates of employment and 
appears to have had a negligible effect on our estimates of 
hours and earnings.  For the period from February through 
July of this year, correcting this programming error will 
result in small changes in individual months’ employment 
and a net cumulative change in estimated employment growth 
of less than 20,000.  The current estimate of job growth 
for that period is about 1.1 million. 
Turning to data from the household survey, the 
unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in September, little 
different from its August level.  The jobless rate for 
adult men, which fell sharply last month, rose to 4.5 
percent. Teenage unemployment dropped to 15.6 percent.
	In summary, the labor market was somewhat weaker in 
September.  Payroll employment was flat, as all major 
industries showed either slower growth or declines.  The 
unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent, showed very little 
movement.

My colleagues and I now would be glad to answer your 
questions.
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