August 05, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Payroll employment in July 2008

Total nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend down in July. Thus far in 2008, payroll employment has fallen by 463,000.

Over-the-month change in payroll employment, July 2007-July 2008
[Chart data—TXT]

Over the month, employment continued to decline in manufacturing, construction, employment services, wholesale trade, and the information industry. Health care and mining continued to add jobs over the month.

These data are from the BLS Current Employment Statistics program, and are seasonally adjusted. Data for the most recent two months are preliminary. More information can be found in "The Employment Situation: July 2008," (HTML) (PDF) news release USDL 08-1049.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

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