The Bureau of Labor Statistics
announced Friday that the United States completed its 58th consecutive month of overall job growth in July, the 65th consecutive month of private sector job growth. The bureau reported that on a seasonally adjusted basis, the economy created 210,000 new, private, full- and part-time non-farm jobs last month. Governments at all levels added 5,000 new jobs.
But wages once again nearly flat, rising just 0.2 percent over June. A week ago, the Department of Labor reported that U.S. wages and salaries rose 0.2 percent in the second quarter, the slowest pace on record since records began in 1982.
The BLS notes that the "monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 90,000." That means the "real" number of new jobs created in June wasn't 223,000 but somewhere in a range between 133,000 and 313,000. That range illustrates why every month's BLS revisions of the two previous months can be so large.
The bureau revised its tally of job growth for May's from 254,000 to 260,000 and for June from 223,000 to 231,000. That puts the monthly average for the past eight months at 211,000.
The official unemployment rate—which the BLS labels U3—remained at 5.3 percent. The bureau also measures both unemployment and underemployment, which it labels U6. This includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want full-time jobs but can't find one, and many "discouraged" workers. That fell in July to 10.4 percent.
The civilian workforce rose by 69,000, after having fallen 432,000 in June. The employment-population ratio remained at 59.3 percent, and labor force participation was also unchanged at 62.6 percent.
Many analysts now speculate that the report was good enough to boost the chances that the Fed will raise interest rates at its September meeting. But there is one more jobs report before that meeting.
For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.
During the Obama administration, some 13 million news jobs have been created in spite of the gigantic job losses in 2009 as a consequence of the Great Recession that began in the final year of the Bush administration.
Among the many measures that the BLS reports on each month is the job situation for Americans in their prime working years, that is, those who are aged 25-54. That gauge gives us a clearer picture of how the economy is doing because it eliminates youth who are more likely to be employed sporadically out of choice as well as people who are 55 and older, many of whom are retiring.
The employment rate for those in the 25-54 cohort peaked at 81.9 percent in April 2000. That had fallen to 79.7 percent in December 2007 and hit bottom at 74.8 percent in November 2010. The rate been rising slowly ever since. In July, it fell from 77.2 percent to 77.1 percent.
Key aspects of the report:
Hours & Wages
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose 3 cents to $21.01 in July
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payrolls rose to 34.6 hours in July
•Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls rose 5 cents to $24.99
• The manufacturing workweek moved up to 40.7 hours.
• The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private non-farm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours.
Among other news in the June job report:
Demographic breakdown of official (U3) seasonally adjusted jobless rate:
• African American: 9.1 percent, down from 9.5 percent in June
• Latino: percent, 6.8 percent, up from 6.6 percent in June
• Asian (not seasonally adjusted): 4.0 percent, up from 3.8 percent in June
• American Indian (data not collected on monthly basis)
• White: 4.6 percent, unchanged from June
• Adult women (20 and older): 4.9 percent, up from 4.8 percent in June
• Adult Men (20 and older): 4.8 percent, unchanged from June
• Teenagers (16-19): 16.2 percent, down from 18.1 percent in June
Duration of unemployment:
• Less than five weeks: 2.488 million, up from 2.355 million in June
• 5 to 14 weeks: 2.257 million, down from 2.364 million in June
• 15 to 26 weeks: 1.188 million, down from 1.393 million in June
• 27 weeks and more: 2.180 million, up from 2.121 million in June
Job gains and losses in selected categories:
• Professional services: + 40,000
• Transportation & warehousing : + 14,400
• Leisure & hospitality: + 30,000
• Information: + 2,000
• Health care & social assistance: + 30,100
• Retail trade: + 35,900
• Construction: + 6,000
• Manufacturing: + 15,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in July for the previous 10 years.
July 2005: + 375,000
July 2006: + 206,000
July 2007: - 34,000
July 2008: - 210,000
July 2009: - 325,000
July 2010: - 64,000
July 2011: + 117,000
July 2012: + 177,000
July 2013: + 164,000
Julu 2014: + 249,000
July 2015: + 215,000
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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. Here is the BLS's explanation of its methodology. 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.