Up against expectations of adding 180,000 jobs in the month of July, 2016, the economy actually added 255,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.9 percent.
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The second big rise came from health care sector, which added 43,000 jobs last month, with gains mostly coming from ambulatory health care services, up 19,000, and hospitals which added 17,000. May’s was revised to 24,000 from 11,000, and June’s to 292,000 from 287,000.
The report shows that average hourly pay is up 2.6 percent to $25.69 from where it was a year ago, which matches the fastest growth rate since the recession.
The U.S. central bank raised interest rates at the end of previous year, its first hike in almost a decade, but since then has held them steady amid concerns over persistently low U.S. inflation and a global growth slowdown.
The year-over-year growth rate for temporary jobs in the U.S. ticked up to 1.9% in July.
The Commerce Department said last month that economic activity had grown by a paltry 1.2 per cent in the second quarter – data at odds with Friday’s rosier jobs report. But from June to July the number of people working part-time but looking for full-time jobs increased by 100,000 from 5.84 million to 5.94 million.
Better news? Average hourly earnings rose by 0.3 percent – beating estimates of 0.2 percent (and last month’s 0.1 percent print).
“The bulk of new jobs added remain in low-paying industries”, the website Zero Hedge noted. Economic growth is expected to accelerate to at least a 2.5 per cent annualized rate in the third quarter, after averaging a tepid 1.0 per cent in the last three quarters.
While this certainly gets July on the podium, a gold medal performance would also lower the unemployment rate, bring significant numbers of new workers into the labor force, and see strong wage growth.
In addition, the new jobs data continued to show weak growth in wages.
Democrats have been attempting to portray an upbeat picture of the United States economy to bolster Barack Obama’s legacy. “102 million people are either outside the labor force or unemployed”.
Employment gains for June and May, meanwhile, were revised up by a combined 18,000.
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Harry Holzer, former chief economist of the US Department of Labor, said: “The July employment report is very broadly positive”. Within the industry, employment rose by 37,000 in professional and technical services in July, led by computer systems design and related services (up 8,000) and architectural and engineering services (up 7,000).
