MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US loss of jobs slowing but unemployment still above 9.5%

Some of the US main metropolitan areas have unemployment rates above 15%

A report from a private researcher in United States established that August saw US employers cut the smallest number of jobs in nearly a year. ADP reports 298,000 non-government jobs were cut during August, which is considerably less than the prior month (360.000).

The ADP company gathers the information as it processes payrolls for millions of workers at thousands of US companies.

A separate report from job placement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas says it saw the number of layoff announcements decline in August (by more than 20,000 to a bit more than 76,000), compared to the prior month.

Together, the two reports may indicate the battered US job market is improving. A clearer picture of the job situation is expected on Friday when the federal government experts report the latest unemployment figures.

Another job loss effect may be reflected in a separate report on US worker productivity to be released this week. The amount that each worker produces each hour rose significantly in the second quarter. Analysts say those gains came largely from employers cutting jobs and squeezing more work out of their remaining employees.

The Labour Department's official US unemployment rate is expected to tick up from 9.4% to 9.5%.

An anticipation of Friday was this Tuesday Labour Department release showing unemployment in 372 US metropolitan areas continued their upward climb in July.

Some 19 metropolitan areas now have unemployment rates above 15%; eight are in California, hard-hit by the real-estate collapse, and five are in Michigan, suffering from the auto industry's downturn.

El Centro, Calif., continues to have the US highest official unemployment rate, rising to 30.2% in July. Yuma, Arizona, is next with 26.2%. The national average in July for metro areas was 9.7%, not seasonally adjusted.

There were a few bright spots in July, mostly in interior states less affected by the real-estate boom and bust and aided by relative strength in natural-resources industries. Bismarck in North Dakota posted the lowest jobless rate in July, 3.1%, followed by Fargo, North Dakota and Rapid City, South Dakota at 4.3% each.

Among the biggest US cities with a million people or more, Detroit's unemployment rate was highest, at 17.7%, followed by Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario, California, at 14.3% and Las Vegas at 13.1%.

Oklahoma City, at 5.9%, and the Washington, D.C., metro area, at 6.2%, had the lowest unemployment rates among the US biggest cities in July.