September 2024 Employment Situation — 2024-10-04

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 254,000 in September, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, government, social assistance, and construction. This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry. For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note. Both the unemployment rate, at 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 6.8 million, changed little in September. These measures are higher than a year earlier, when the jobless rate was 3.8 percent, and the number of unemployed people was 6.3 million. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (3.7 percent) decreased in September.