The unemployment rate is down, and more people are returning to the labor force. But finding a job isn’t easy.

More Americans are returning to the labor market. But more are also joing the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

The decline in unemployment has slowed since an early rebound from the first wave of COVID-19 shutdowns.

Eight months after the virus struck, the U.S. economy still has recovered barely half the that were lost to the pandemic.

America’s employers added 661,000 jobs in September, the third straight month of slower hiring.

Employers added 1.4 million jobs, but that’s the fewest since the pandemic began.

Let’s do the numbers … but with more context.

Service-sector jobs are coming back, but professionals who’ve been working from home are facing layoffs.

Employment remains below pre-pandemic levels, and as recently reopened businesses re-close, more job losses are on the way.

The diffusion index, a measure of the breadth of job gains across industries, jumped for the second month in a row.