Summary: The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly estimates, which doesn’t look good for the legal sector.
The legal field lost nearly 2,000 jobs during the month of August. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released their seasonally adjusted data on Friday with the estimates.
The agency reported that an estimated 1,117,600 people were working in the legal sector in August. July showed 1,119,600 jobs.
When looking at last year’s numbers, the numbers for August this year are 4,800 less than a year ago. This number is only an estimate and can be edited next month like July was. The original estimate for July was 1,122,000 jobs.
The peak for the industry was in 2007 when there were 1,179,000 people employed in the field. The overall numbers for the U.S. economy showed an addition of 173,000 jobs for August. This number is just over what was predicted. The national unemployment rate has continued to slowly drop to 5.1 percent.
These numbers must be taken with a grain of salt since the numbers of temporary jobs lost are not represented accurately as well as many other factors that influence the reports numbers.
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee was anxiously awaiting the report before they met later in the month. The bank will be deciding if the interest rates need to be raised, which would be the first time since the 2008 financial crisis.
Source: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202736480466/Legal-Sector-Sheds-2000-Jobs-in-August
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