The U.S. economy added 224,000 jobs in June, heavily beating expectations and creating a cautious optimism among analysts wary of the dismal growth seen in May.
The unemployment rate remained largely unchanged at 3.7 percent — or 6 million people — in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Friday in its monthly jobs report.
“The number did beat expections but ... it was pretty abysmal a month ago, and that was revised downward,” Mitch Roschelle, a partner at PwC, told Cheddar.
In Friday’s report, the BLS amended its May figures from 75,000 to just 72,000 jobs added. June’s employment growth was, however, way above the average of 172,000 per month in 2019 so far. The average monthly gain for 2018 was 223,000 jobs.
The industries with the largest gains were professional and business services and health care, which added more than 51,000 and 35,000 jobs in June respectively. The transportation and warehousing sector added roughly 24,000 jobs.
"JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!" President Donald Trump tweeted Friday morning.
<i>U.S. Labor Department</i>
In June, average hourly earnings rose by 6 cents and have increased by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months.
The report indicates “that the labor market remains a strength of the economy” and “should ease some of the pressure that the Fed faces to cut rates,” Doug Duncan, the senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae, said in a statement to Cheddar.
The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates at its Federal Open Market Committee meeting later this month in an effort to hinder a potential downturn in the economy, which is currently experiencing its longest expansion on record.
“There is really nothing out there short of some big black swan event that will slow down this economy,” Roschelle said, noting, however, that a shrinking of the global economy would threaten domestic growth.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
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