Article source: ConstructConnect
June’s Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) records a pickup in total jobs of +213,000 in the latest month.
But that +213,000 compares June’s level of total jobs with a revised figure for May. May’s figure is now being estimated higher by +37,000 vis à vis what was reported for May a month ago.
Therefore, June’s level of total U.S. jobs is now +250,000 (i.e., the sum of 213,000 and 37,000) versus what was reported by the BLS a month ago. That’s an increase in total employment of a quarter of a million jobs.
The gain in U.S. total employment through the first half of this year has been 1.3 million jobs. In H1 of last year, the increase was 1.1 million.
The monthly average climb so far in 2018 has been +215,000. Through the first six months of 2017, the monthly average increment was also good, but it was a somewhat lower +184,000.
Expressed another way, the monthly average jobs jump in first-half of 2018 has been +17% compared with the first-half of 2017.
The unemployment rate in June fell back slightly to 4.0% from 3.8% in May. The retreat was because the continuation of strong employment prospects has caused a month-to-month uptick in the participation rate, to 62.9% from 62.7%.
Among industrial sub-sectors, the three standouts for jobs improvement in June were: ‘education and health services’, +54,000; ‘professional and business services’, +50,000; and in a long-time-coming and pleasantly-welcome development, ‘manufacturing’, +36,000.
The leap in manufacturing employment was almost all within the durable goods realm, +32,000.
And within durable goods, hiring was most intense in ‘motor vehicles and parts’, +12,000; ‘fabricated metal products’, +7,000; and ‘computer and electronic products’, +5,000.
The +54,000 jog upwards in ‘educational and health services’ employment was comprised of ‘educational services’, +19,000; ‘health care’, +25,000; and ‘social assistance’, +10,000.
Staffing in ‘professional and business services’ (+50,000) received boosts from ‘temporary help services’, +9,000; ‘architectural and engineering services’, +7,000; and ‘computer systems design and related design’, +6,000.
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