The American economy gained 103,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at a very weak 13,000 jobs. The employment-population ratio was flat yet again, and the headline unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.1 percent. Wages of production and nonsupervisory workers were up 2.2 percent. That’s exactly the rate of inflation last month, so blue-collar workers saw no pay increase at all.
This is a pretty sluggish jobs report: new job creation stalled and blue-collar wages were flat. Let’s hope things pick up next month.
