May 22, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Job losses and gains in the third quarter of 2007

From June 2007 to September 2007, the number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments was 7.2 million, and the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments was 7.5 million.

[Chart data—TXT]

Opening and expanding private sector business establishments gained 7.2 million jobs in the third quarter of 2007, a decrease of 395,000 from the previous quarter. Over the quarter, expanding establishments added 5.8 million jobs, while opening establishments added 1.4 million jobs.

Gross job losses totaled 7.5 million, an increase of 81,000 from the previous quarter. During the quarter, contracting establishments lost 6.1 million jobs, while closing establishments lost 1.4 million jobs.

The difference between the number of gross jobs gained and the number of gross jobs lost yielded a net change of -235,000 jobs in the private sector for third quarter 2007. This is the first quarter of net job losses since the second quarter of 2003.

These data are from the Business Employment Dynamics program. To learn more, see "Business Employment Dynamics: Third Quarter 2007," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL 08-0686.