WASHINGTON, DC-The unemployment figures released by the Labor Department
on Friday morning illustrate the stop-and-go nature of this recovery. The US
economy added 67,000 jobs last month, which was more than many economists had forecast. Overall, some 54,000 positions were dropped, many in state and local governments. The cumulative affect of these shifts is a rise in the
unemployment rate to 9.6% from 9.5% in July--the first rise in four
months. The Labor Department also released revised figures for July. Instead of
131,000 positions lost, that number was 54,000.

As usual the Washington DC area, which has posted its fifth consecutive month of job gains, remained relatively immune from the national trends. To state the obvious, that is good news for the commercial real estate industry here, Jones Lang LaSalle's research director, Scott Homa, tells GlobeSt.com. "Over the past year, the Metro Washington, DC region has gained 41,800 jobs, essentially in-line with our long term average of creating approximately
45,000 jobs per year. This is helping drive demand for office space, particularly in markets serving the federal government like NoMa, the Southwest
and Southeast."

Almost half of the job gains in the Metro DC region were concentrated in the
federal government sector, which saw payrolls rise by 19,700 jobs over the
trailing 12 months, Homa notes. "This government expansion is fueling the
positive net absorption we're seeing downtown, as well as close-in suburbs
like Rosslyn-Ballston and Bethesda."