Private-Sector Jobs Increase for the 8th Month, First Time Since 2007; +763,000 Payroll Jobs This Year, But Almost +1.8 Million Total Household Jobs

Some highlights of today's employment report for August:

1. Private-sector jobs have increased in each month this year, and by 67,000 in August, bringing the total to 763,000 private-sector jobs that have been created this year.  This is the first time since December 2006 to July 2007, three years ago, of eight consecutive monthly gains in private-sector employment (see top chart above).

2. Temporary help service jobs increased in August by 16,800 to 2,116,000 jobs, the highest employment level in this sector since December 2008 (see middle chart above).  Except for a small decrease in July of 900 jobs, temporary employment has increased in each month since last October, following 23 consecutive monthly losses from November 2007 to September 2009.  Since last October, temporary employment has increased by 392,200.

3. Average overtime hours for manufacturing increased slightly in August to 3.9 hours from 3.8 hours in July, matching the 3.9 hours in May and June, which is the highest level of overtime since May 2008, more than two years ago. 

Update: Inspired by Scott Grannis' post today, the bottom chart above shows the monthly change in number of private-sector jobs using the household survey measure of total civilian employment that includes the self-employed, MINUS the total number of government employees from the household survey (data available here). Based on that measure of private-sector employment, the economy has added almost 1.8 million new jobs since the first of the year, a pace of more than 200,000 private-sector jobs per month.  (Thanks to Scott Grannis for clarification of how private-sector employment is calcuated using household data.)