Pasadena, California -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/07/2010 -- This Labor Day over 14.9 million people still remain unemployed according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, raising the unemployment rate to 9.6 percent.

Counting the discouraged workers along with those registered as unemployed, the unemployment rate goes up to 16.7 percent. The job report for August showed that only 67,000 nonfarm private sectors jobs were added that month. Out of these, 17,000 jobs were temporary jobs as employers remain wary of hiring regular, fulltime workers. Overall, payrolls actually dropped by 54,000, with the government also shedding 121,000 jobs. 114,000 of those jobs were those of the temporary Census workers, showing that for the past few months, the jobless rate was skewed.

The sectors which created the most jobs were the professional services, education, health services, and leisure and hospitality. The healthcare sector alone added 28,000 jobs, while the construction industry added 19,000 jobs, but most of them were returning from the July strike. Jobs in the temp sector also went up by 17,000 in August.

Reacting to the latest jobs report, A. Harrison Barnes, CEO of Hound, says “It’s not that there are no openings in other sectors, its just that they are fewer than there were used to be. So people just have to be smarter in their job search”. Barnes confidence in the job market stems from the fact that his company, Hound, which is a job search engine, has been able to add over 15,000 in the last two days alone.