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A Labor Chart For Labor Day: U.S. Has Gained 9.2 Million Jobs Since Recession's Lowest Point

This article is more than 9 years old.

Labor Day was created to honor American workers, and this year — despite the Great Recession — there are more of them than ever.

Total U.S. employment topped 139 million workers as of August 1, 2014, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. (That number is expected to climb again when the Labor Department releases its new jobs report on Friday.)

The nation's economic recovery has been slow, but the labor market has gained about 230,000 jobs per month so far this year. That compares to a monthly loss of 298,000 jobs in 2008; a monthly gain of 88,000 jobs in 2010; and a monthly gain of 174,000 jobs in 2012.

By total jobs per month, 2014 has seen the fastest rate of growth since 1998.

The strong gains so far also meant that, as of May 2014, the U.S. economy finally recovered the millions of jobs that the labor market shed between 2008 and 2010.

Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, I've charted out the labor market's decline-and-recovery and pasted the results below.

You can see how the economy rapidly contracted in the waning days of the President George W. Bush administration and into the first 10 months of President Obama's administration, before beginning its U-turn.

And the chart illustrates just how swift that decline was. For example, on Labor Day 2009, there were 6.7 million fewer jobs than on Labor Day 2008 — essentially, as if all of the workers in the entire state of Illinois had suddenly disappeared.

The chart also captures the economy's summer slump in mid-2010, when the labor market shed about 280,000 jobs between June 2010 and September 2010. But since then, the economy has since posted 46 consecutive months of job growth.

Since hitting bottom in February 2010, the private sector has been even more robust: It's currently experiencing 53 consecutive months of job growth. (Every month represents a new record.)

More than 1 million of those jobs have been in health care — or to put it another way, the health care sector is responsible for every job created (and then some), since the Great Recession began.

Also See: Healthcare Jobs Are Growing. So Why Are Hospital Jobs Flat?

There are fair questions about the jobs that are driving the U.S. recovery. For instance, many of these new jobs are in demanding sectors like home health, as millions of Americans had to switch sectors to get back in the workforce. And many older, frustrated Americans are still unemployed and missing out on the economic recovery.

But on a day created to celebrate American workers, four straight years of jobs growth — after the worst economic crisis in eighty years — is something worth celebrating, too.

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