All in all, it’s not a bad jobs report to kick off the summer. The Labor Department’s report shows the economy added 213,000 new jobs in June even though experts predicted only 190,000.
This means job growth has happened 93 months in a row, which is a record.
Unemployment went up to 4% from 3.8%, but that probably went up because of the rise in labor participation.
The June jobs report also boosted up the May and April reports. The Labor Department revised May’s numbers to 244,000 jobs from 223,000 and April from 175,000 to 159,000. That’s an additional 37,000 jobs for those two months.
While many will latch onto the unemployment rate going up, it’s important to note it went up “largely due to 601,000 Americans entering the labor force.” June saw work participation rise to 62.9% from 62.7% in May.
The unemployment for women and Hispanics went down:
I know the media (and myself) have grumbled about the trade war President Donald Trump has waged with tariffs. The jobs report showed that manufacturing added 36,000 jobs in June compared to 19,000 in May. According to Capital Economics, “the strong pace of hiring suggests ‘that escalating trade tensions are so far having little impact on the factory sector.'” Martha Gimbel, director of economic research at Indeed, said there there’s no sign in the June reports that the tariffs have slowed down job growth. That may change in the future, though.
The Wall Street Journal has more:
The bulk of June’s hiring was in the durable goods sector. Over the past year, the manufacturing sector has added 285,000 jobs.One particularly bright spot last month was professional and business services, where payrolls rose by 50,000 in June. Over the last year, that sector has added 521,000 jobs.The manufacturing labor market continued to be strong, adding 36,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods. The secor has added 285,000 jobs in the last 12 months.Health care jobs rose by 25,000, continuing a period of strength. Construction added 13,000 jobs, and mining employment added 5,000.Retail trade lost 22,000, mostly offsetting a gain of 25,000 last month.
While the prime age participation group remains high, it slipped a little in June.
Wages went up 2.7% from a year ago and .2% from May. This is also good when it comes to inflation:
Treasury analysts are reading the latest jobs report as a largely benign one as far as inflation goes.Average hourly earnings rose 0.2% in June from the month earlier, less than the 0.3% that economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal had expected. Investors have been closely watching wage growth to gauge whether inflation could be accelerating–something that some fear could prompt the Federal Reserve to pick up its pace of interest rates increases.Friday’s jobs report, which sent Treasury prices and U.S. stock futures higher, seemed to reassure investors that inflation remains a benign force.”A mixed bag to be sure, but from an inflation perspective the release was consistent with the bullish flattening currently underway in the Treasury market,” said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. government bond strategy at BMO Capital Markets, in a note to clients.
Eric Winograd, a senior economist at AB, said that “[T]he economy remains in a virtuous loop: the labor market is supporting consumption, which is supporting growth, which is supporting the labor market.” He also doesn’t believe “the situation will change soon.”
[Featured image via YouTube]
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