Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in July

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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.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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