Unemployment at Post-Recession Low, With Dismal Participation Rate

Source: Ed Brown, via Wikimedia Commons The U.S. Department of Labor has released the highly awaited unemployment and payrolls report for the month of June. All in all, it looks like an inline report, but the reality is that there is some really soft data in this report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there was a gain of 223,000 in nonfarm payrolls. Bloomberg had a consensus estimate of 230,000. The official unemployment rate was listed as 5.3%, rather than the 5.4% expected by Bloomberg, but this was due to a labor force participation rate of a lousy 62.6%. That participation rate was a sharp drop of 0.3% from the prior month and was the lowest in years.

There were also downward revisions of a combined 60,000 payrolls for the prior two months. That was broken down as 254,000 in May, versus the 280,000 original forecast, and April was revised to 187,000 from a previous forecast of 221,000.

Payrolls in the private sector grew by 223,000 in June, compared with the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 225,000.

Average hourly earnings were flat at $24.95, and the average workweek was flat at 34.5 hours.

Ahead of the official payrolls report, we had mixed data from ADP and TrimTabs. ADP’s National Employment Report suggested on Wednesday that the U.S. economy’s private sector employment increased by 237,000 jobs in June over May. TrimTabs projected that the U.S. economy added 190,000 jobs in June.

This is one of those jobs reports that will not light a fire under Janet Yellen’s rear-end to hurry up those rate hikes any faster than the market is expecting.

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