Securities Industry Done with the August Doldrums

By Jeff Testerman

Commentary September 15, 2010 at 08:00 PM

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Overall

When is bad news, good news? Apparently when it comes to U.S. Employment as reported in the Labor Department's stats for August – a loss of 54,000 jobs was better than expected and this number included the 121,000 temporary Census workers whose employment ended in August.

With the private sector adding 67,000 jobs, a big upward revision to June and July of an additional 123,000 workers and a result that beat economists expectation, this report was seen as positive by the markets.

Securities Industry

The Securities Industry experience a slight weakening in hiring during August with the group losing just over 1,000 jobs.

However, this level is about 10,000 jobs higher than the low point experienced in March of this year.

The fall hiring season is now upon us and the expectation is for the hiring picture to improve slowly through the end of the year.

Finance and Insurance

The broader sector that includes banks, insurance and securities companies, continues to languish at relatively low employment levels.

A loss of 6,500 jobs for the month of August continues the see-saw movement at an employment level of around 5.5 million – off over 500,000 jobs since the beginning of this downturn which started in July of 2006.

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