September Job Data Worse Than Expected
October 2, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Business
When the Labor Department released the job data for the month of September, many experts were shocked at the unexpectedly poor numbers. As a result, the stock market took a hit on Friday.
Most experts believed that around 175,000 jobs were lost in September. However, the Labor Department said that job losses for September were actually more than 260,000. Compared to the 200,000 jobs lost in August, the unemployment probably appears to be getting worse instead of better.
Overall, the Labor Department says that the unemployment rate in the United States is 9.8%. That number was also higher than expected.
On the day, the Dow Jones dropped about 0.2%, while both the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq composite index fell about 0.5%. The Russell 2000 index was down about 0.6%.
Many analysts expect the downward trend to continue into next week after the poor job numbers. While the recession may technically be over, the unemployment numbers aren’t recovering at the expected rate.
Wall Street isn't happy with the job statistics (Image: Flickr)
