Unemployment for July

The July Unemployment numbers came out today at 8:30am EST and showed unemployment basically unchanged in both U3 (official unemployment rate) and U6 (real unemployment rate).  U3 is at 9.5% and U6 is sitting around 18.5%.  The labor force contracted for the 3rd month in a row, this month by 181k.  The number of employed contracted as well from the month prior, but do to equal contraction forces in the other numbers U3 and U6 remain unchanged.  Looking at this from a different angle, there are less employed people in the US than there was last month.  Another question that has to be asked, if the labor force is contracting by approximately .04% (or 623k) in the last 3 months, where are they going?  Attached is the chart and as usual the updated copy is at the bottom of the blog.

However when looking at Non-Farm Payrolls we see a contraction of 131k jobs, which is horrible.  What is Non-Farm Payrolls you may ask?  Non-Farm Payrolls is the change in the amount of people employed from the previous month, with the exception of the farming industry.  Here is the graph on how we are trending for the last year.