Fewer job-losses in August, but unemployment jumps to 9.7%

US rate of unemployment jumped to 9.7 per cent in August, the highest in the last 26-year period, however employers axed fewer jobs in August as compared with the previous month.

As per Labor Department, only 216,000 jobs were hacked in August, fewest since August last year, while Briefing.com had envisaged 230,000 job-losses in August.

It may be noted here that revised job-losses in July stood at 276,000. Unemployment rate in July was 9.4 per cent.

Job-losses among temporary employees plunged from 7,900 in July to 6,500 in August.

Analysts hope the number of temporary workers to go positive in the next few months, which will boost job gains in 2010.

Director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, Dean Baker, said, “It's a good picture compared to where we were, which was just a free fall.” However, he further said that the rate of fall was slowing but not coming to an end.

In total, around 6.9 million jobs have been hacked so far since the beginning of last year.

Fresh figures also showed that 9.1 million workers remained in part-time jobs as they could not get full-time jobs.

Speaking on the issue, Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein said that the results would have far worse in the absence of the stimulus spending.