In a
report showing well above the forecast consensus, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that the U.S. economy generated 262,000 seasonally adjusted new private non-farm jobs in June while 26,000 public-sector jobs were added for a total of 288,000. The official unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008. The better-than-expected number marked the fifth month in a row that more than 200,000 new jobs have been created, something that hasn't happened since 1999.
The number of jobs originally reported in May was revised from 217,000 to 224,000, and in April from 282,000 to 304,000.
The news is certain to bolster the view of many economists that the second quarter's annualized growth in gross domestic product will rebound sharply after the stunning contraction of 2.9 percent in the first quarter. Most are forecasting at least 3 percent growth, with the possibility of an even higher GDP figure for the April-June period.
Both full-time and part-time jobs are included in the bureau's total. The growth in jobs was led by the low-paying sectors like retail and hospitality with the high-paying sectors like construction and manufacturing lagging.
The bureau tallied the number of unemployed Americans at 9.5 million, down 325,000 from last month, but still high even though the Great Recession has been officially over for five years. This number does not include millions of workers who have left the workforce out of despair that they will find a job. There are now 414,000 more jobs than there were at the pre-recession peak.
The employment-population ratio rose to 59 percent. The labor force participation rate also remained where it has been for three months, at 62.8 percent.
In addition to the familiar "headline" calculations above—known at the BLS as U3—the bureau puts together alternative measures. One of these is U6, which includes Americans with no job, those working part time who want full-time positions and workers who have looked for jobs in the past 12 months but not in the past four weeks. U6 fell from 12.2 percent in May to 12.1 percent in June.
Americans in the category of the long-term unemployed—jobless for 27 weeks or more—fell to 3.1 million, 32.8 percent of the total unemployed, the lowest level since June 2009.
For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.
The payroll services company Automatic Data Processing reported on Wednesday that the economy gained a seasonally adjusted 281,000 private-sector jobs for June. ADP does not report on public-sector jobs, and its calculation rarely matches those of the BLS for private-sector jobs.
Among other news in the June job report:
Demographic breakdown of official (U3) seasonally adjusted jobless rate:
• African American: 10.7 percent
• Latino: 7.8 percent
• Asian (not seasonally adjusted): 5.1 percent
• American Indian (data not collected on monthly basis)
• White: 5.3 percent
• Adult women (20 and older): 5.3 percent
• Adult Men (20 and older): 5.7 percent
• Teenagers (16-19): 21.0 percent
Duration of unemployment:
• Less than five weeks: 2.4 million
• 5 to 14 weeks: 2.4 million
• 15 to 26 weeks: 1.47 million
• 27 weeks and more: 3.1 million
Job gains and losses in selected categories:
• Professional services: + 67,000
• Transportation and warehousing : + 16,600
• Leisure & hospitality: + 39,000
• Information: + 9,000
• Health care: + 33,700
• Retail trade: + 40,200
• Construction: + 6,000
• Manufacturing: + 16,000
• Average weekly manufacturing hours remained steady at 41.1 hours.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payrolls remained at 34.5 hours for the fourth month in a row.
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 4 cents to $20.58.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls rose 6 cents to $24.45.
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in June for the previous 10 years.
June 2004: + 74,000
June 2005: + 245,000
June 2006: + 77,000
June 2007: + 71,000
June 2008: - 172,000
June 2009: - 467,000
June 2010: - 122,000
June 2011: + 217,000
June 2012: + 88,000
June 2013: + 201,000
June 2014: + 288,000
••• •••
The BLS jobs report is the product of a pair of surveys, one of more than 410,000 business establishments called Current Employment Statistics, and one called the Current Population Survey, which questions 60,000 householders each month. The establishment survey determines how many new jobs were added. It is always calculated on a seasonally adjusted basis determined by a frequently tweaked formula. The BLS report only provides a snapshot of what's happening at a single point in time.
It's important to understand that the jobs-created-last-month-numbers that it reports are not "real." Not because of a conspiracy, but because statisticians apply formulas to the raw data, estimate the number of jobs created by the "birth" and "death" of businesses, and use other filters to fine-tune the numbers. And, always good to remember, in the fine print, they tell us that the actual number of newly created jobs reported is actually plus or minus 100,000.