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No way to sugarcoat this: The economy showed zero employment growth in August, the first time there has been no increase in net jobs in almost a year. From the NYT:
There are now 14 million workers who are looking for work and cannot find it; the figure nearly doubles if you include workers who are in part-time jobs but want to be employed full time, and those who want to work but have stopped looking. A broader measure of the unemployment rate that includes these underemployed workers is 16.1 percent.
The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey, held steady at 9.1 percent. Wall Street is not taking the news well - the Dow is down about 200 points in the first 30 minutes of trading.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.