National Unemployment Rate Holds Steady; Job Losses Slow

There was some good employment news on Friday at the national level: The U.S. unemployment rate for July was reported at 9.4 percent, which is slightly lower than the (revised) June rate of 9.5 percent. Although there were about 247,000 jobs lost from June to July, this was significantly fewer than the last several months... as illustrated by the last bar in the graph below:

As with the last several months, the largest job losses were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade. The health care industry, meanwhile, posted an employment gain over the month.

Further details are available in this month's press release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.