A Longer Way To Go

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com The July decline in the jobless rate came about not because more people had jobs, but because 422,000 people removed themselves from the labor force, essentially giving up the search for work. The number of long-term unemployed people -- those who have been out of a job but looking for more than 26 weeks -- rose by another 584,000. "There's nothing really happening right now," said Marc Patterson, 31, a Southeast Washington resident unemployed for seven months who had little luck finding work as a janitor. "There aren't too many jobs." And the number of jobs with employment services companies continued declining in July. Increases in that number tend to forecast broader gains in employment as companies reluctant to hire permanent employees bring on temps to handle rising demand. "If we don't see temp jobs go positive by September or October, in my mind, that would indicate we've got a longer way to go," said Roy G. Krause, chief executive of Spherion, a large employment services firm.