In July, nonfarm payroll employment added 114,000 jobs, falling under the 12-month average monthly gain of 215,000 jobs, according to the latest BLS jobs report. Measures for May and June were also revised down in the latest report, from 218,000 to 216,000 and from 206,000 to 179,000, respectively.
Much of the job growth in July was within health care (+55,000 jobs), construction (+25,000 jobs), and transportation and warehousing (+14,000 jobs). Meanwhile, employment in temporary help services continued declining with the loss of close to 9,000 jobs in July. Temp help employment is down by nearly 149,000 jobs from July 2023.
The unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage point to 4.3% in July, with 7.2 million people unemployed, up by 352,000. This is significantly higher than last year’s 3.5% unemployment rate and 5.9 million unemployed people. Long-term unemployment impacted 1.5 million people in July, accounting for 21.6% of unemployed people and up from 1.2 million a year ago.
