The U.S. added 114,000 jobs in September, causing the unemployment rate to slip to 7.8 percent—a figure not seen since January 2009, when President Obama first took office. There were other unexpected nuggets of good news, too: numbers for July and August were revised upward to show 86,000 more jobs created than previously reported. The numbers could have a crucial effect on the presidential election, in which Mitt Romney has been running on the weak economy.
Total employment rose by 873,000 in September, a significant jump that could help explain the drop in the unemployment rate.
This is also the first report to be released since the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced it had undercounted employment for the previous year by 386,000.
Read the full report at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
