Getty Economy added 255,000 jobs in July

The economy added 255,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported Friday, down from 292,000 in June.

Unemployment was 4.9 percent, unchanged from June. Average private-sector earnings were up eight cents. In June, they were up two cents.


The jobs numbers were good news for Hillary Clinton, who has praised President Barack Obama's economic record, and will likely ease concerns that the economy is slowing down after the Commerce Department reported last week that Gross Domestic Product increased a meager 1.2 percent during the second quarter of 2016. The second quarter's growth rate was higher than the first quarter's 0.8 percent but lower than the fourth quarter of 2015's 1.4 percent. The Commerce Department's second cut at estimating second quarter growth for 2016 will be released Aug. 26.

Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said job growth in 2016 remained "well above the pace needed to maintain a low and stable unemployment rate" and noted that "nominal hourly earnings for private-sector workers have risen at an annual rate of 2.9 percent so far in 2016, well above the pace of inflation."

House Education and the Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said the report showed that under the Obama administration "we have experienced consistent economic gains."

"This progress serves as a great foundation to continue the work needed to support working people across the nation," he said.

But Republicans were less enthusiastic. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) noted the second quarter of 2016's weak GDP numbers and said Friday's "positive jobs report doesn’t mask the fact that, month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year, hard-working Americans have been waiting for the economy to improve under the Obama Administration."

Jesse Edgerton, an economist at JP Morgan Chase & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg that the report demonstrates "the labor market is firming up," adding that "this will reinforce the Fed's view that improvement in the labor market is likely to continue."

Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy, was more cautious. She said that "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." She added that the economy will reach full employment only when wage growth nears 3.5 percent for a sustained period of time.

Analysts had predicted the creation of about 185,000 jobs, an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent and an increase in hourly earnings of 0.3 percent, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. The payroll company ADP estimated Wednesday based on its own records that July job growth in the private sector was 179,000.

Labor force participation remained low, at 62.8 percent, up from June’s 62.7 percent.