The U.S. Department of Labor is heralding the upcoming long weekend by announcing that in August, 54,000 Americans saw their weekends extended indefinitely as employers cut jobs.
Economists surveyed by Reuteres were expecting a nonfarm payroll decline of 99,000. The total number of unemployed Americans ticked up to 14.9 million, and the unemployment rate edged up slightly from July to 9.6 percent. A big culprit in the August job loss number was the loss of 114,000 temporary jobs created by the government for the U.S. census. The private sector added 67,000 jobs, down from an upwardly revised 107,000 in July.
The government tally of people who’d been without work for at least 27 weeks dropped by 323,000 in Augugst to 6.2 million.
