Last month the U.S. unemployment rate rose by 0.2% to 3.7%, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on two monthly surveys.
This means that the number of unemployed people in the country increased by 344,000 to 6 million. Unemployment for adult men increased by 3.5%, as well as 4.5% for Hispanic people.
In July employment seemed to have settled back to pre COVID-19 pandemic numbers. However, even before the employment statistics were released this week there been news of layoffs in the U.S. at companies such as Gannett, Peloton, Snap, T-Mobile, Re/Max, Netflix and Shopify.
“In August, 1.9 million persons reported that they had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic – that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the [four] weeks preceding the survey due to the pandemic,” said the BLS. “This measure is down from 2.2 million in the previous month.”
Temporary layoffs remained unchanged in August but the number of people who permanently lost jobs increased by 188,000. Long-term unemployment (27 weeks or more) impacted 18.8% of all unemployed people.
Numbers of people who work part time due to reduced hours or inability to find full time work remained stable last month at 4.1 million.
While the overall unemployment rate increased, nonfarm payroll employment increased by 315,000 last month, with notable job gains reported in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade. Additionally, the amount of people who are not in the labor force but currently want a job declined by 361,000 to 5.5 million in August.
Only 6.5% of people who were employed in August teleworked due to the pandemic, down from 7.1% the previous month.
Over the past 12 months, total nonfarm employment has risen by 5.8 million “as the labor market continued to recover from the job losses of the pandemic-induced recession,” said the BLS. So far, growth has brought employment higher than its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
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