Restaurant hiring was unexpectedly robust last month. | Photo: Shutterstock.
Hiring at restaurants and bars surged in September at roughly five times the rate of prior months, signaling a marked improvement in business conditions at the tail end of summer.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday that eating and drinking places added 69,400 jobs during the month, a leap from the 14,000 that were added on average during each of the prior 12 months.Â
No other economic sector came close to matching that level of job creation. The figure signals that more than 1 in four jobs added during September was at a restaurant or a bar.
But hiring across all segments was unexpectedly robust. In total, 254,000 jobs were added, about a 20% step up from the average for the prior year and nearly double the 142,000 new positions that had been expected for the month. The surge held the national unemployment rate to a temperate 4.1%.
But the lift reflects in part a re-evaluation by BLS of hiring levels for prior months. The agency acknowledged that it had undershot actual hiring levels for July and August in the preliminary numbers initially released for those periods. About 55,000 more nonfarm jobs were added during July than the 89,000 that were originally reported, and the August tally of 142,000 was off by 17,000, BLS said.
The agency also revised the number of jobs at restaurants in August by more than 23,000 jobs.
The dramatic restatements suggest economic conditions may have been healthier than was originally indicated.
The acceleration of recruitment in September raised total employment within eating and drinking places to 12.5 million, according to BLS’ preliminary assessment. That figure eclipsed the 12.3 million that were on the sector’s payroll as of Feb. 2020, or a month before the pandemic hit.Â
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