The September US employment report showed little movement in either headline figure. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a net 29,000, with little change recorded in any major industry. The unemployment rate edged up from 4.1% to 4.2%, within the narrow range of 4.1% to 4.3% observed since March.
The two numbers come from different surveys. Employers report jobs on their payrolls, so a person working two jobs can be counted twice. The unemployment rate comes from a household survey that counts people. A modest rise in the number of payroll jobs does not translate into an equal reduction in the number of people out of work.
Length of unemployment adds a dimension the headline rate cannot provide. About 1.9 million people had been unemployed for at least 27 weeks, just over a quarter of all unemployed people. A stable rate can therefore coexist with very different experiences of how quickly jobseekers find work.