The U.S. economy added 156,000 nonfarm payroll positions in September, according to the latest monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), released this morning. This seasonally adjusted figure—a slight drop from August's upwardly revised addition of 167,000 jobs—falls short of the Wall Street's expectation. The national unemployment rate ticked up to 5.0 percent, while the labor-force participation rate stood at 62.9 percent. Average hourly wages for private, nonfarm workers continued to rise to $25.79 in September, a 6-cent gain month-over-month.
The construction industry got a big employment bounce in September, adding 23,000 payroll positions. The manufacturing sector, which has been a soft spot in the economy, continued to shed jobs: 13,000 jobs in September. Meanwhile, the payrolls in the architectural and engineering services sector gained 1,500 positions, making September its fifth straight month of growth.
From the BLS's historical data release: The BLS also releases detailed information subsets of key markets with a one month lag, in this case offering more detailed information of the architectural and engineering services category's response to the broader economy's hiring slowdown in June. The charts below highlight a monthly job-growth breakdown of the architectural services, landscape architectural services, and engineering and drafting services between August 2015 and August 2016. Details of these subcategories' September performance will be revealed in next month's historical data release.
