The September jobs report is often buoyed by the public schools. Districts across the country are hiring teachers, bus drivers and administrative staff for the fall term.

This did not occur in 2021.

The September 2021 Jobs Report showed that government employment (which includes both state education and local education) was down with 123,000 jobs being lost in the public sector.

That number was further broken down by the fact that employment fell by approximately 144,000 for local government education, and roughly 17,000 for state education. This is a seasonal adjusted figure. This means that, while public school hiring did rise, it was not enough to compensate for the seasonal adjustment. It resulted in an overall net loss.

Elise Gould (an economist with the Economic Policy Institute) wrote that the bounceback in local government education was less than anticipated for schools opening in September, and seasonally adjusted K-12 jobs fell by 144,000.” She tweeted the following release of the report.

“The shortage may be linked to recent reports that difficulty in hiring certain positions, such as bus drivers or food service workers, substitute teachers, sometimes lower-wage positions filled by older workers who might be more concerned about infectious diseases,” she said.

Public school employment remains challenging despite the introduction of Covid-19, and local schools districts are still experiencing a decline in more than 300,000.

“The majority of back-to-school employment occurs in September,” the Labor Department stated. According to a Labor Department release, September hiring was less than normal. This resulted in an increase in seasonal adjustments. The Labor Department stated that recent employment changes were difficult to interpret because of pandemic-related personnel fluctuations in both public and private education. This has distorted normal seasonal hiring or layoff patterns.

This was evident in the September 2021 jobs report. It showed that the U.S. had added only 1% to its economy. 194,000 jobs last monthThis is a. This was far below the expected 500,000. In contrast to the 5.2% unemployment rate, it fell to 4.8%.

CNBC examined the September job market changes by industry based upon data in the government’s employment report.

Economists blamed the disappointing payrolls numbers on the infrequently occurring education data, but most sectors of the private sector saw decent results last month.

In August the hospitality and leisure sector was hit hard with little change in employment. However, it rebounded in September with 74,000 net gains and 43,000 jobs added in art, entertainment, or recreation.

Noticeably, the hiring of restaurants and bars declined for the second month in a row, as compared to a monthly average gain of 197,000 between January and July. Since February 2020, employment in hospitality and leisure has fallen by 9.4% or 1.6million.

“With a small increase of 74,000 jobs in September after a weaker August — again likely the result of the surge in the Delta variant at the end of the summer — leisure and hospitality has a jobs shortfall of nearly 1.6 million since February 2020. It is still a pandemic! Gould said.

In September, the wide-ranging business and professional services industry added 60,000 new jobs. The number of jobs available in the management, technical and managerial consulting, architectural, engineering, computer systems design, and other related areas continued to rise.

—Nate Rattner, CNBC Reporter, contributed reporting.