The US economy generated 209,000 new jobs in July, down from June but maintaining the solid 200,000-plus monthly streak since February, the Commerce Department says.
The unemployment rate rose a mere 0.1 point to 6.2 per cent, still near its lowest level since October 2008 and well down from the 7.9 per cent at the start of 2013.
The new jobs were well-spread between the construction, manufacturing, professional service and retail sectors, and got a boost as well from 11,000 new jobs in the government sector.
Nevertheless, the number of unemployed rose by nearly 200,000 to 9.67 million, in part because of the constant increase in the number of working-age Americans, as well a return to the labour force by 141,000 people who had dropped out and were not previously counted as unemployed.
Average weekly earnings ticked up only slightly, suggesting, as the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, that there is still slack in the labour market despite the steady gains in job creation.
The July job creation number was only slightly below what economists had expected, while the department revised higher June's new jobs figure to 298,000.
That left the average since January at a respectable 223,000 jobs created per month. It was the first time since 1997 that the economy had added more than 200,000 jobs a month for six months straight.
Even so, that had more impact in 1997, when the population was much smaller. There were still significant signs of economic weakness in the figures.
Besides the slow wage growth, the rate of participation in the labour force was 62.9 per cent, nearly the lowest in decades; the number of long-term unemployed, a particular worry for policy-makers, ticked up to 3.2 million; and the number of people working part-time because they could not find full-time jobs was flat at 7.5 million.
Those numbers are important as economists and policy-makers debate whether the economy is accelerating and inflation is picking up, which would mandate tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve.
Share
