The latest U.S. payroll data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics indicated that the U.S. economy added 220,000 jobs while the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.4% for the month of June. The sectors see increases were health care, social assistance, financial activities and mining.
In June, health care added 37,000 jobs. Health care has added an average of 24,000 jobs per month in the first half of 2017, compared with a monthly average of 32,000 jobs in 2016. On the other hand, social assistance employment increased by 23,000 in June. Social assistance has added 115,000 jobs over the last 12 months.
Employment in financial activities rose by 17,000 in June and has grown by 169,000 over the year. In June, mining employment grew by 8,000; since a recent employment low in October 2016, mining has added 56,000 jobs. Alternatively, employment in professional and business services continued to trend up in June by 35,000 and has grown by 624,000 over the last 12 months.
The number of unemployed persons stood at 7.0 million, which changed little since the last review. Since January, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed are down by 0.4 percentage point and 658,000, respectively.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men was4.0%, adult women 4.0%, teenagers 13.3%, Whites 3.8%, Blacks 7.1%, Asians 3.6%, and Hispanics 4.8% showed little or no change in June. While the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was unchanged at 1.7 million in June and accounted for 24.3% of the unemployed
Finally, in June, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 4 cents to $26.25. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 63 cents, or 2.5%. In June, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and non supervisory employees increased by 4 cents to $22.03.
