The headlines should signal relief…
They don’t actually….
(And remember they come from the Trump admin)
Quietly?
The American economy is showing signs of a down turn….
The best news to be found in June jobs numbers, released Friday morning, is in what they don’t show.
After the May numbers showed a steep pullback in the rate of job creation, there was reason to worry that a turning point for the economy had arrived, and that a major slowdown or even recession could be in the offing — a fear seemingly confirmed by many surveys of industrial activity.
The June numbers did nothing to confirm that narrative, putting those fears to rest at least for one more month.
Employers added a robust 224,000 jobs, the Labor Department said, up from a revised 72,000 in May. The unemployment rate edged up, but for a benign reason: The number of people who were without a job but looking for one rose, meaning the share of Americans in the labor force increased; the number of people working rose even more.
Notably, the manufacturing sector added 17,000 jobs after two straight months of adding a mere 3,000, evidence that some of those bad results in surveys are not translating into less hiring. It aligns with other real-time indicators of the job market, such as weekly claims for unemployment insurance benefits, which hover near historical lows.