Job update

The latest national job report didn’t bring good news. The number of jobs decreased. But N.C. State University economist Mike Walden says there is a silver lining.

“If we look at the September numbers, payroll jobs in the country declined by 95,000. That’s not good. There are some silver linings, though. All of the decline was due to a decline in government jobs. Government jobs went down by 159,000. So jobs in the private sector actually went up by a little over 60,000. That’s good. Furthermore of those 159,000 government jobs that were lost, 70,000 were due to the discontinuation of the temporary Census jobs. So this is not all bad.

“But even looking at those private-sector jobs of around 60,000 — that is still a very, very small number. We need to be generating, really, to make significant progress against unemployment somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 private-sector jobs a month. So we are just not doing that. And unfortunately — unfortunately — economists don’t see that on the immediate horizon. So we certainly still have a jobs problem in the country.”