U.S. loses 263,000 jobs in September

We were waiting for two big announcements this morning at CareerBuilder. One was about Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics  – our corporate headquarters are in downtown Chicago — and the other was about September’s unemployment numbers. Well, the Olympics are going to Rio de Janeiro and the job losses were higher than expected.

The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers trimmed 263,000 jobs last month. While that number is slightly higher than predicted and the more than the number in August (201,000), it still is much lower than the numbers we saw in late 2008 and into 2009. The largest job losses were in construction, manufacturing, retail and government.

“We’re not going to see job growth until the second half of next year. And even when it does start to grow, it’s going to be slow,” said  Marissa Di Natale from Moody’s Economy.com in today’s New York Times Economix blog.

Because the economy is still healing, we’re likely to see some fluctuation month to month, but CareerBuilder’s recent survey indicates that less employers plan to decrease staff levels in Q4 compared to Q3.  If you look at the number of jobs lost from May 2009 through September 2009, that average (307,000) was half of the average we saw from November 2008 to April 2009 (645,000).

While the national unemployment rate hit 9.8% in September, there are areas in the country where that rate is much lower and much higher. If you’re thinking of relocating to greener (as in money) pastures for work, take a look at this interactive map from Forbes. It breaks down the unemployment rate of every county in the United States. Did you know the unemployment rate in Bismarck, N.D. is 3.3%?

Although the rising unemployment rate may mean more candidates applying to jobs, attendees at a recent conference for recruiting professionals discussed how this influx of candidates has not made it any easier to find the right, qualified talent for available positions. Translation: As a job seeker, you might be down, but you’re definitely not out. You just need to be competitive – something you should practice in your job search no matter the market.

What you want to do is continue to market yourself aggressively and look to those areas that are hiring today.  Currently, we’re seeing a demand for workers in health care, sales, customer service, technology and education.