It’s nice to see that at least one sector of the U.S. economy continues to do well, earning profits and creating jobs consistently (more than 40,000 last month) while the rest of the economy goes in and out of recession. McClatchy reports on where an increasing share of the money to fund those profits and new jobs has been coming from.

It must really suck to be an HR person around this time of the year as you prepare to tell all the company employees how much more they’ll be paying for their health insurance premiums in the year ahead. Of course, most workers are probably just happy to have a job, so the push back is likely not what it was just a few years ago before the recession began.

Before departing for the cozy confines of Berkeley and the job of teaching economics rather than making economic policy (what’s that old expression about “teaching” and “doing”?), Christina Romer, the outgoing chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, had these thoughts to share on this morning’s labor report:

Against the backdrop of some unsettling economic data in the past few weeks, today’s numbers are reassuring that growth and recovery are continuing. At the same time, the fact that the growth of private-sector payrolls is below the level needed to keep up with normal growth of the labor force is obviously unacceptable. There are a number of steps we could take to help increase private sector job growth and put the economy on a path of steadily declining unemployment. We will be working with Congress on these measures in the coming weeks.

It’s not likely that this sort of “reassurance” is going to pass muster with voters in a couple months when they go to the polls and the fact that the President’s top economic advisers are exiting stage left just when it looks as though things are about to take a turn for the worse only adds to the growing concern that Americans will soon be able to express.

The Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls declined by 54,000 in August and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent. The overall decline was driven by the departure of 114,000 temporary 2010 Census workers and private sector payrolls rose by 67,000.

The increase in private payrolls was more than the consensus estimate of 40,000 and, coming after an upwardly revised gain of 107,000 in July, eased some fears that higher jobless claims might lead to renewed job losses for U.S. companies.

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A short time ago, ADP reported that U.S. private sector employment fell by 10,000 in August, the first monthly decline since January. Shown below are the changes in employment for goods-producing industries where job losses have accelerated since the spring.

This bolsters the case that Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report from the Labor Department is likely to produce a six figure number with a minus sign in front of it after laid off Census workers and cutbacks in state and local government jobs are included in the mix.