US job market rebounds with June hiring surge of 287000

Trulia Chief Economist Ralph McLaughlin said that June’s job gains “ushered in relief that the US labor market is doing well in a maturing economic cycle” but at the same time, he too was not optimistic about housing.

May’s job creation numbers in fact were revised downward in today’s data from the original 38,000 reported to just 11,000.

While U.S. non-farm payrolls swelled by 287,000 jobs in June, the most since October, the number of trucking jobs fell for the fifth straight month, according to a new U.S. Labor Department report issued on Friday, July 8. Average hourly earnings increased only two cents or 0.1 percent in June, Reuters added. However, May’s disappointing jobs report and the uncertainty following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union appeared to have pushed any rate rise well into the future. The stronger spending led economists to forecast that annualized growth rebounded to 2 percent or more in the April-June quarter. The solid jobs figures raise hopes that the USA economy, which has repeatedly shrugged off overseas headwinds in past years, may be able to keep growing even as the rest of the world stumbles. That compares with average monthly gains of 196,000 in the first three months of this year and 229,000 in 2015. Employers added an average of 172,000 jobs a month in the first six months of this year. Those workers will be counted as “new” jobs under the Labor Department’s rules, so economists and traders will be looking for job gains over 135,000.

The striking Verizon workers were cited as an explanation for the May’s dismal performance and indeed this month they were added back to the payrolls.

Health care employment increased by 39,000 over the month, with gains in ambulatory health care services of 19,000 and hospitals adding 15,000 jobs.

As analysts said the data increases the chances that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at least once before the end of the year, early in the session the dollar jumped and United States bond yields, which had plunged in recent weeks, spiked higher.

The signs of economic strength would be welcomed by Fed officials. “We are seeing evidence in 2016 of that tradeoff that you frequently see as you’re getting closer and closer to full employment where the pace of job growth lessens, and the pace of wage growth hastens”.

On the household side of the ledger, unemployment edged up a bit, from 4.7 to 4.9 percent.

Healthcare and social assistance saw 58,000 jobs added. “We’d be absorbing lots of the workers who have been discouraged by weak labor markets over the past couple of years, people who in a healthy economy would be looking for a job”.

“The June report again shows what the broader trend data has shown over the last five, six years-which is that the economy is resilient”, said Perez in a phone interview Friday. “There is less slack to absorb”, said Thomas Costerg, senior USA economist at Standard Chartered Bank in NY.