The U.S. Labor Department had some good news to share before the country celebrates the Fourth of July weekend. With the holiday on a Friday this month, June’s jobs numbers were released today and showed a 0.2 percent decline in the unemployment rate.
Last month, the unemployment rate stayed at 6.3 percent, but the Labor Department said that the rate dipped to 6.1 percent last month.
Overall, 288,000 jobs were added in the month, thanks to a growth of hiring in several private sectors, including food services, retail and business services. In addition, there are 9.5 million unemployed persons, a drop of 325,000 from May.
The department said that unemployment rates for adult women and African Americans fell to 5.3 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively. However, the unemployment rate for teens climbed to 21 percent.
The report was not what analysts were expecting. “It’s an extremely bullish report. It's a report that really checks off all the positive boxes. I don’t think you could have asked for a stronger read,” Jacob Oubina, a senior U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, told Reuters.
This is the fifth straight month that 200,000 or more jobs were added and the jobless rate is nearing a six-year low.
It also turns out that the reports for April and May were shortchanged. April actually saw 304,000 jobs added, instead of 282,000 as previously reported, the department said. In May, the actual number was 224,000, not 217,000.
image of President Obama courtesy of Michele Eve Sandberg/INFphoto.com