FOR DELIVERY: 9:30 A.M., E.D.T.
                            FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1996


Advance copies of this statement are made available to the
press under lock-up conditions with the explicit
understanding that the data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m.
Eastern Daylight Time.

Statement of

Katharine G. Abraham
Commissioner
Bureau of Labor Statistics

Friday, October 4, 1996





	Good morning. I am pleased to have this opportunity to
comment on the employment and unemployment data released
this morning.
	Nonfarm payroll employment was virtually unchanged in
September after seven months of steady growth.  The
unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent, also was little changed
over the month.
	Manufacturing employment fell by 57,000 in September,
with losses spread through most of the component
industries. Employment in transportation equipment fell by
12,000, mostly because of losses in automobile
manufacturing; industrial machinery also lost 11,000 jobs.
In nondurable goods manufacturing, food processing lost
7,000 jobs.  Losses in this industry have been accelerating
in recent months.  Employment in printing and publishing
also continued to decline, falling by 5,000.
	Elsewhere in the goods-producing sector, growth in
construction was weak, owing in part to losses in heavy
construction in the wake of hurricane Fran.  Mining
employment resumed its long-term downward trend.
	In the service-producing sector, government employment
fell by 81,000 over the month, due largely to a decline of
67,000 in local education.  This decline partly offset
unusually large gains recorded over the summer.  Local
education is an industry in which there are large seasonal
swings in employment over the course of the year.  Due to
changes in school schedules, there were larger returns to
payrolls prior to September this year than were expected by
our seasonal factors.  This accounts for the large
increases, on a seasonally adjusted basis, in local
education employment over the summer and for this month’s
sharp decline. Taking a longer view, local education
employment was up by 157,000 compared to its year-ago
level.  The long-term decline in federal government
employment continued in September.
	Employment growth in services, which continued to slow
in September, was only 54,000.  This is less than half of
this industry’s average monthly increase during the first
half of 1996.  Smaller-than-usual increases in the help
supply component of business services and a decline in
private educational services contributed to the overall
weakness.  On the other hand, health services, which grew
by 30,000 over the month, improved after 3 months of slow
growth.  Half of the increase in health services was in
hospitals.  Motion pictures and engineering and management
services both were quite strong.
	Retail trade was sluggish for the second straight
month.  Employment in eating and drinking places rose by
15,000, and there were smaller increases in building
materials stores, auto dealers and service stations, and
furniture and home furnishings.  Employment declined,
however, in general merchandise, apparel, and miscellaneous
retail stores.
	Average weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory
workers on nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.2 hour to 34.7
hours in September.  The factory workweek edged up by a
tenth of an hour to 41.8 hours.  Average hourly earnings
rose by 6 cents and were up by 3.5 percent over the year.
Before moving on to the data from the household
survey, I would like to call your attention to a technical
correction that affects the payroll employment numbers
presented in this month’s news release.  During the
preparation of the data for September, we identified a
coding error in the X-12 ARIMA computer program that has
been used since June to seasonally adjust the data from our
establishment survey.   The seasonally adjusted employment
data for August and September released today have been
produced using corrected factors.  We are in the process of
recalculating all of the employment series from March
through July and the hours and earnings data from March
through September, and plan to release the revised data
series on October 18.
Although we are making these corrections in the
interest of ensuring that our published series provide as
clear a picture of recent trends as possible, I would note
that the error we have discovered had only a very small
effect on our historical estimates of employment and
appears to have had a negligible effect on our estimates of
hours and earnings.  For the period from February through
July of this year, correcting this programming error will
result in small changes in individual months’ employment
and a net cumulative change in estimated employment growth
of less than 20,000.  The current estimate of job growth
for that period is about 1.1 million.
Turning to data from the household survey, the
unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in September, little
different from its August level.  The jobless rate for
adult men, which fell sharply last month, rose to 4.5
percent. Teenage unemployment dropped to 15.6 percent.
	In summary, the labor market was somewhat weaker in
September.  Payroll employment was flat, as all major
industries showed either slower growth or declines.  The
unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent, showed very little
movement.

My colleagues and I now would be glad to answer your
questions.

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