The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its June 2024 Report, so let’s take a look at how employment fared over the last month.
The great news is:
- In June, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 206,000 people.
- Social assistance, construction, health care, and government saw the largest share of new jobs in June.
- In June, average hourly earnings for private non-farm payroll jobs increased by 0.3%, or 10 cents, to $35.00. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.9%.
The good news is:
- The unemployment rate showed little change in June at 4.1%, or 6.8 million people.
- The number of discouraged workers who believed there were no jobs available to them decreased by 100,000 to 365,000 people.
- The average work week for private non-farm payroll employees remained at 34.3 hours in June.
The bad news is:
- The unemployment rate and the number of unemployed people were both higher in June than they were at the same time last year, where the jobless rate was 3.6% with 6.0 million unemployed persons.
- The number of long-term unemployed, people without a job for 27 weeks or more, increased slightly to 1.5 million people, accounting for 22.2% of total unemployed persons, up from 1.1 million people at the same time last year.
- There was a minimal increase in the labor force participation rate, at 62.6%, which has shown little change over the past year.
- The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job decreased to 5.2 million people in June. Keep in mind, these 5.7 million people were not counted as unemployed because they were unavailable to take a job or were not actively looking for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.