In today’s labor market report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September saw a further 263,000 decline in the number of jobs in the country. Against most expectations, this was a worse number than in August (-201,000), but it was better than in July (-304,000). The biggest drop of all in the downturn was in January of this year at -741,000. The majority of analysts had been expecting the September figure to be about -175,000.