Kathleen P. Utgoff
Commissioner
Bureau of Labor Statistics
before the
Joint Economic Committee
UNITED STATES CONGRESS
Friday, October 8, 2004
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the September employment and unemployment statistics that we released this morning.
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in September, increasing by 96,000. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent. Since August 2003, payroll employment has increased by 1.8 million. About 900,000, or half of that gain, occurred in March, April, and May of this year. Employment gains in the last 4 months have totaled 405,000.
I know that many people have speculated about the effect of the recent hurricanes on the September payroll employment data. Four hurricanes struck the U.S. during August and September: Charley in mid-August, Frances early in September, Ivan in mid-September, and Jeanne late in the month. This month, BLS and our State partners made extra efforts to obtain data from our survey respondents in the hurricane-affected states. As a result, our total response rate, even in the affected states, was as good as or better than it normally is for first publication. Still, our ability to gauge the impact on September’s job growth is limited for reasons that I will discuss in a moment.
First, let me note how our payroll survey treats employment in businesses that are affected by weather events. For weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay period and not be paid for the time missed.
BLS’ review of the sample data for September in the hurricane-affected areas indicates that there was a negative impact on employment in those areas. We will know more about the local effects when the official state estimates are available in 2 weeks.
There were negative employment effects on those firms that were unable to operate or were operating at a reduced capacity during the survey period. However, other firms expanded their employment in response to the storms. There were clean-up and rebuilding efforts following Hurricanes Charley and Frances. In addition, some firms adjacent to the hard-hit areas likely added workers to help accommodate evacuees from Hurricane Ivan.
Overall, we do not believe that the net result of these factors materially changes the national employment situation for September, but we cannot precisely quantify the weather effects.
