Unemployment Rate Drops in July

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July 2009 actually went down vs. the prior month... The drop was 0.1 percentage point from 9.5% to 9.4%... What is interesting, however, is that the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate did not change---It held steady at 9.7% in both June and July.

Click on Charts for a sharper Image.

Additionally, the seasonally adjusted U-6 Unemployment Rate for July also went down (16.3% in July vs. 16.5% in June). However, the non-seasonally adjusted figure stayed at16.% in both June and July. There were two other bits of good news in this week's jobs report.

#1 It was the smallest amount of job losses in about 1 year (~250,000)

#2 The average work week climbed up 0.1 hours compared to the prior period---so the people with jobs are getting a few more hours.