The American economy added 215,000 new jobs last month, 90,000 of which were needed to keep up with population growth. This means that net job growth clocked in at 125,000 jobs and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.3 percent.
Unlike last month, which had a similar top line jobs number, this is a decent jobs report. There was no big exodus from the labor force and no big drop in the labor force participation rate. The number of employed workers went up by 101,000, the number of unemployed went down by 33,000, and the participation rate stayed steady. Nearly the entire gain in employment was from the private sector.
So….not too bad. As with most recent economic reports, it doesn’t suggest things are booming, but it does suggest that we’re plodding along. For what it’s worth, that’s better than Europe or China can say.
