The private sector added a paltry 57,000 jobs in June, according to seasonally adjusted figures announced this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. State and local government layoffs of 39,000 cut the net gain to 18,000.
The overall increase was far below expectations and more evidence that economic growth is sputtering. Those expectations had been driven upward by an encouraging private jobs report released by ADP on Thursday. Making today's news even worse, job gains for the previous two months were revised downward by 44,000. A likely consequence of today's announcement will be downward revisions for estimates of growth in gross domestic product for the third quarter and a retreat from the view of some economists, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, that the economic slowdown is transitory.
The official unemployment rate—U3—(which is calculated from a different survey than the one determining the number of jobs gained or lost) rose to 9.2 percent. An alternative measure—U6—that includes the underemployed and a portion of discouraged workers soared to 16.2 percent.
The number of officially unemployed rose to 14.1 million. The labor force participation rate held steady at an historically low 64.1 percent, where it has remained for five months. The employment-population ratio fell to 58.2 percent. The number of Americans out of work for six months or more rose to 6.3 million.
Revisions changed job gains previously reported for April from 232,000 to 217,000, and for May from 54,000 to 25,000.
Two years ago in June, 502,000 jobs were shed; last year the loss was 192,000, much of it caused by lay-offs in temporary Census jobs. At the current level of net job creation—for the past six months it has averaged 133,500 a monthly—it will take until October 2015 to reach the pre-recession level of employment as measured in December 2007.
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Among other statistics in today's report:
• The average workweek for production and non-supervisory workers fell to 34.3 hours.
• The average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 1 cent, to $22.99.