Today's jobs report contains encouraging signs that the labor market is healing but also reminders that it remains far from fully healed. Payroll employment jumped by 288,000 in June and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent. While employment increased sharply and unemployment fell, there was little net growth in the labor force, leaving the percentage of people with a job well below where it was at the start of the Great Recession. Nearly a third of the unemployed have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer and encounter more re-employment obstacles than the typical jobseeker. That’s why Congress should act immediately to restore emergency federal unemployment insurance.



















