After a weak month of job gains in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the economy generated 224,000 jobs in June, 191,000 in the private sector, 33,000 in the public. The headline rate of unemployment—labeled U3 by the bureau—rose slightly to 3.7% in June, the lowest in nearly half a century. The BLS calculates job gains in other cohorts each month. One of them—U6—counts unemployment as well as underemployment. In June U6 rose 0.1 point to 7.2%.
As always, the bureau revised its figures for the previous two months, reducing gains in May from 75,000 to 72,000, and in April from 224,000 to 216,000.
June marked the 105th consecutive month of job expansion, a match for the longest such stretch since statistics were first collected in 1939.
Average wages rose slightly in June. Over the past 12 months, they have risen 3.1% against inflation of 1.8%.
But while the economic expansion is now the longest in U.S. history, the Dow is at a record level, and wages overall have been growing faster than they were in 2017 and 2018, growth has been slower than in the past, and the benefits have not been distributed evenly. The bottom half of the population has less wealth today, after adjusting for inflation, than was the case 30 years ago. Heather Long reports:
This is a “two-tier recovery,” said Matthew Mish, head of credit strategy at the investment bank UBS. About 60 percent of Americans have benefited financially, he said, while 40 percent have not.
The 40 percent — which Mish calls the “lower tier” — have seen paltry or volatile wage growth, rising expenses for housing, health care and education, and increased levels of personal debt. They tend not to own homes or many stocks. [...]
“So many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck,” said Signe-Mary McKernan, vice president of the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute. “We are headed toward a political crisis, if not an economic one.”
Other statistics from the June report:
The civilian workforce rose by 335,000 in June, after rising by 176,000 in May and falling by 490,000 in April.
The labor force participation rate rose to 62.8% in June. The employment-population ratio remained steady at 60.6%.
Unemployment rates differ by race and sex. (June percentages in bold; May percentages in [brackets and italics].) Adult men: 3.3% [3.3%]; Adult women: 3.3% [3.2%]; Whites: 3.3% [3.3%] ; Blacks: 6.0% [6.2%]; Asians: 2.1% [2.5%]; Hispanics: 4.3% [4.2%]; American Indians: Not counted monthly.
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose in June by 4 cents an hour to $23.43.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls in June rose 6 cents an hour to $27.90.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payroll was unchanged at 34.4 hours in June.
• The manufacturing work week in June rose by 0.1 hour to 40.7 hours.
June Job Gains and Losses for selected categories:
- Temporary help services: 4,300
- Transportation & warehousing: 23,900
- Financial activities: 2,000
- Leisure & hospitality: 10,000
- Information: 2,000
- Professional and business services: 51,000
- Education and health services: 61,000
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- Health care & social assistance: 50,500
- Retail trade: -5,800 [after shedding 31,300 in March, April, and May]
- Construction: -1,000
- Manufacturing: 17,000
- Mining and Logging: -1,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in the previous decade compared with this June’s gain of 224,000 jobs:
June 2009: -465,000
June 2010: -136,000
June 2011: 235,000
June 2012: 72,000
June 2013: 181,000
June 2014: 324,000
June 2015: 170,000
June 2016: 282,000
June 2017: 229,000
June 2018: 262,000
The BLS depends on the Current Employment Survey of 147,000 business establishments to estimate the number of jobs gained in a particular month and derives the unemployment rate from another study, the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households. The final day of the surveys falls around the 12th of each month, which means this month’s jobs data actually measure jobs gained in the first part of June and the last part of May.