by Calculated Risk on 8/07/2009 08:30:00 AM

From the BLS:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in July (-247,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The average monthly job loss for May through July (-331,000) was about half the average decline for November through April (-645,000). In July, job losses continued in many of the major industry sectors.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the unemployment rate and the year over year change in employment vs. recessions.

Nonfarm payrolls decreased by 247,000 in July. The economy has lost almost 5.7 million jobs over the last year, and 6.66 million jobs during the 19 consecutive months of job losses.

The unemployment rate declined slightly to 9.4 percent.

Year over year employment is strongly negative.

The second graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost).

For the current recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession was a slow starter (in terms of job losses and declines in GDP).

However job losses have really picked up over the last year, and the current recession is now the 2nd worst recession since WWII in percentage terms (and the 1948 recession recovered very quickly) - and also in terms of the unemployment rate (only early '80s recession was worse).

With fewer job losses ("only" a rate of 3 million job losses per year), and the dip in unemployment rate, this will be consider an improvement. It is still a weak employment report. Much more to come ...