por alexander_7531 » Jue Jul 02, 2015 9:52 am
U.S. Economy Adds 223,000 Jobs; Unemployment at 5.3%
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
JULY 2, 2015
Good, but hardly great.
The economy added a healthy 223,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Thursday, but other indicators, showing wages growing slowly and jobless Americans remaining on the sidelines, painted a grayer picture.
Indeed, while the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent, the lowest in seven years, that was driven largely by an exodus of people from the work force, rather than more Americans finding work. Moreover, the strong job gains for April and May, which had led many analysts to predict that the economy was picking up steam, were revised downward by 60,000 jobs.
Despite the drop in the unemployment rate, from 5.5 percent in May, average hourly earnings stayed flat, disappointing hopes that wages were finally increasing for many workers and suggesting that the labor market still has plenty of slack.
The share of American adults either working or looking for a job, which in many ways is a better gauge of economic robustness than the oft-cited jobless rate, fell 0.3 percentage point in June. With June’s drop, the labor participation rate is now at its lowest level since 1977.
“This was an okay report, but the unemployment rate didn’t go down for the right reasons,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, Still, after bottoming out in March as the overall economy stalled, hiring has been reasonably strong if not spectacular inrecent months, along with other indicators like home sales and consumer spending. In the first half of the year, employers added workers at an average rate of 208,000 a month, compared with a monthly gain of nearly 260,000 jobs in 2014.
While the American economy is not delivering as many gains to workers as expected six years into the recovery conditions here stands in sharp contrast to the situation overseas. Europe has been rocked by the continuing drama over whether Greece will exit the eurozone, and concerns are rising about the fallout from the slowdown in China’s once white-hot economy.
Policy makers at the Federal Reserve are keeping a close eye on conditions abroad and volatility on Wall Street and overseas bourses, which could shift the timetable for the central bank’s long-awaited increase in short-term interest rates if markets show signs of panic.
So far, anything resembling the contagion of 2008 has not materialized, despite Greece’s slow-motion descent into financial chaos. Although the jobs data for June suggest a September rate increase by the Fed is still possible, experts caution that it is far from a lock given the uncertainty overseas.
The Fed and private economists have been watching participation in the labor market closely for any sign that millions of unemployed Americans who gave up and dropped out of the work force after the recession are finally looking for jobs again.
While exporters have had to contend with the headwinds from Europe, China and a stronger dollar, domestically focused sectors like construction, health care and education have supplied much of the labor market’s overall momentum.
What’s more, white-collar workers in fields like finance, insurance, software and marketing have been in high demand lately, a turnaround from the early days of the recovery when many new jobs tended to be in low-wage sectors like retailing and restaurants.
Since last summer, for example, the financial sector has added more than 100,000 new positions, bringing total employment in finance to just over eight million, the highest level since the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed. In June alone, insurers, investment companies and other financial institutions added 20,000 workers.
“We’re seeing companies put money into the back office,” said Tom Gimbel, chief executive of LaSalle Network, a Chicago-based staffing firm. “They want to hire for permanent positions in areas like marketing, human resources and accounting.”
Despite these signs of health, the American economy still has a feast-or-famine quality in many corners.
For example, wage growth has picked up slightly this year but gains remain relatively restrained. Over the last 12 months, earnings are up 2 percent.
Even as those back office, white-collar jobs are filled with workers who nearly always have a bachelor’s degree, Mr. Gimbel noted, employers also want college graduates for positions where a high school diploma used to suffice, like call center operators.
As the pool of college graduates has grown larger, younger workers have found themselves forced to take jobs they once would have turned down cold.
“More kids are going to college and some of them don’t have any choice,” Mr. Gimbel said. “It’s not just the Big 10, Notre Dame and the Ivies anymore.” Students from less prestigious colleges or candidates with lower grade point averages are taking jobs at call centers earning $25,000 to $30,000 a year, he said.
Preferred sectors for new college graduates entering the work force this summer, like sales, marketing and administration, pay in the range of $30,000 to $35,000 annually, Mr. Gimbel said. One major exception to the pattern of stubbornly slow raises is the technology sector, especially for workers fluent in coding, programming and software development.
“Depending on their level of experience, a good coder can earn $100,000 to $175,000,” he said. “We never have enough candidates.”