Economy adds 850k jobs in June to exceed expectations, unemployment rate edges up
How do you feel about the state of the job market?
By Eric Revell, Countable News
What’s the story?
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday released its jobs report for June 2021, which found the U.S. economy added 850,000 jobs and the unemployment increased by 0.1 percentage point to 5.9%. The BLS said that the gains occurred as “pandemic-related restrictions continued to ease in some parts of the country.”
- The June jobs numbers exceeded the Dow Jones forecast of 706,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate was higher than economists’ forecasted 5.6% unemployment rate.
Jobs Report Sector Breakdown
- Leisure and hospitality employed increased by 343,000 in June, with over half the gain occurring in food and drinking establishments (+194,000). Employment is 2.2 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
- Education saw job gains in local government education (+155,000), state government education (+75,000), and private education (+39,000). Pandemic-related changes to school staffing levels and the normal seasonal buildup and layoff patterns likely contributed to job gains in June. All three categories of education employment are down relative to February 2020, including local government education (-414,000), state government education (-168,000), and private education (-255,000).
- Professional and business services added 72,000 jobs in June but are down by 633,000 jobs compared to February 2020. Most of the last month’s gains occurred in temporary help services (+33,000), advertising and related services (+8,000).
- Retail added 67,000 jobs in June, with most of it occurring in clothing stores (+28,000) and general merchandise stores (+25,000), while notable job losses occurred in food and beverage stores (-13,000) and health and personal care stores (-7,000). The sector as a whole is down by 303,000 jobs relative to February 2020.
Long-Term Unemployment
- The number of Americans considered to be long-term unemployed (defined as jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 233,000 to a total of 4 million in June. Long-term unemployed accounted for 42.1% of all unemployed in June.
- That follows a decline in the number of long-term unemployed by 431,000 in May, and the number of long-term unemployed is 2.9 million higher than the pre-pandemic level from February 2020.
Demographic Unemployment Information
- Unemployment rates showed little to no change in June for adult men (5.9% from 5.9% in May), adult women (5.5% from 5.4% in May), and teenagers (9.9% from 9.6% in May).
- Unemployment rates edged up slightly in June among Whites (5.2% from 5.1% in May), Blacks(9.2% from 9.1% in May), Hispanics (7.4% from 7.3% in May), and Asians (5.8% from 5.5% in May).
Revisions & Data Notes
- Employment in April was revised down by 9,000 from +278,000 to +269,000.
- Employment in May was revised up by 24,000 from +559,000 to +583,000.
- As it has since March 2020, the BLS published an estimate of what the unemployment rate would have been had misclassified workers been included. The misclassification hinges on a question about the main reason people were absent from their jobs, with people absent due to temporary, pandemic-related closures recorded as absent due to “other reasons” as opposed to unemployed due to temporary layoff.
- Using this approach, the June unemployment rate would have been 0.2 percentage points higher than reported. The BLS notes that this represents the upper bound of their estimate of misclassification and probably overstates the size of the misclassification error.
- According to usual practice at the BLS, data is accepted as recorded in the household survey. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.
(Photo Credit: iStock.com / gooneybird)
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