Jobs numbers remain flat at 9.1%

The nation's employment market fizzled out in August.

Private employers added 17,000 jobs but the government sector cut an equal amount, leaving a net of zero for the month, according to federal data released Friday. It was the first zero-sum reading for the job market since February 1945, when the country had just fallen into a recession.

The unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent last month, extending the unbroken string of readings above 8 percent since January 2009. Long Island's unemployment rate -- currently 7.1 percent -- has remained stubbornly high amid job losses in the past three months' reports.

Though some economists noted that a strike by 48,000 Verizon Communications workers last month trimmed the nation's private-sector gains, those numbers would have still been weak without the strike. In addition, revisions for June and July show much weaker job growth than first reported.

Local government layoffs of teachers, cops and firefighters have spooked some in the private sector, one expert said.

"The more that companies that sell different services see that their potential customers are leaving their jobs or are taking pay cuts, that raises questions for companies about whether demand is going to be that much weaker," said Gregory DeFreitas, an economics professor who heads Hofstra University's labor studies program. Amid such concern, "they don't expand and they don't hire."

Robert Basso, who owns Advantage Payroll Services, a Freeport company with 2,500 small to midsized clients, said that big layoffs left many of his clients chronically short-staffed but that they also remain reluctant to hire because of slack consumer demand.

"A lot of medium and small businesses don't have a lot of new business," he said.

News of an ever-weakening job market has dispirited some job seekers.

"You're not hearing anything to encourage you," said Ella Ponsford of Wantagh, who lost her job as the director of information technology at a Manhattan nonprofit in October 2009. Ponsford, who used the layoff period to become certified as an IT project manager, has decided to set up a consulting business. "Companies might be more inclined to bring in a consultant than a full-time person," she said.

A weaker job market was bad news for Mellissa Schulman, 49, of Commack. She lost her bank mortgage-sales job in January 2008. "I can't get positions I am qualified for, and I can't get positions I am overqualified for," she said.