Slowly, US firms add workers

The private sector added 67,000 jobs in August, with some of the strongest gains in health care, food service, and temporary help, according to the Labor Department. That was higher than consensus forecasts, and the government upwardly revised its numbers for June and July, suggesting that job creation was slightly stronger over the summer than originally reported.

But the continuing wind-down of the 2010 Census, as well as state and local government layoffs, led to an overall loss of 54,000 jobs in August.

With businesses adding about half the number of positions needed simply to accommodate population growth — much less dent the ranks of the jobless — the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6 percent, from 9.5 percent.

“The overall picture is one where the labor market is still kind of treading water,’’ said Joshua Shapiro, chief US economist at MFR Inc. “It’s better than sinking, but it’s certainly not surging ahead.’’

The August numbers, which pushed up stock gauges yesterday, are likely to do little to assuage political pressure on the Obama administration in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden yesterday morning, President Obama called the latest jobs report “positive news’’ but said he would be unveiling “a broader package of ideas next week’’ to shore up the flagging economy. The president once again urged Congress to pass a stalled bill that would offer tax breaks to small businesses and create a $30 billion program to encourage community banks to lend.

“The hard truth is that it took years to create our current economic problems, and it will take more time than any of us would like to repair the damage,’’ he said. Optimists were taking their good news where they could. By the end of the day, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 1.32 percent, continuing a rally that began in the middle of the week. Market reaction to the jobs data was tempered somewhat by a report that said growth in the services sector had slowed in August.

According to the government, manufacturing, which has been a bright spot since the beginning of the year, showed a surprise setback in the government numbers released yesterday.

For the first time since January, the sector lost jobs, a total of 27,000 in August. The Labor Department said the decline was in part because carmakers did not shut down plants in July as they usually do, throwing off seasonal adjustments in August.

Thomas J. Duesterberg, the president of the Manufacturers Alliance-MAPI, said that the organization’s members were slowly adding workers.

Slow growth is certainly cold comfort to those who are out of work and seeking a job, a number that rose to 14.9 million in August, from 14.6 million in July. In one small sign of improvement, the number of people out of work for 27 weeks — which grew alarmingly throughout the recession and its aftermath — declined by 323,000, to 6.2 million in August, from 6.6 million in July. The median length of unemployment fell to 19.9 weeks in August, from 22.2 weeks in July.

The so-called underemployment rate — including people whose hours have been cut as well as those who would like work but have given up on the search — rose to 16.7 percent in August, compared with 16.5 percent in July. The number of people who were working part time because they could not find full-time work rose to 8.9 million in August, from 8.5 million in July.