Employment in construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities and government changed little over the month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Overall, total nonfarm payroll employment grew 156,000 in August, with the unemployment rate up slightly to 5 percent.

Mining employment was unchanged in September after declining by 220,000 from a peak in September 2014.

The number of persons unemployed less than five weeks increased by 284,000 to 2.6 million in September. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 2 million and accounted for 24.9 percent of the unemployed.

In September, 1.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.