In the midst of a busy holiday period, June’s Job Report and May’s Job Opening Survey were released last week. While some experts are dubbing the report as a “steady-as-she-goes” snapshot of the U.S. economy, the June report and May turnover survey bring in some useful information. With inflation and an election at the top of everyone’s mind, the new report did not do much to put worries to rest. There are fewer new jobs than there have been in recent months, and unemployment rose slightly for the third month in a row. While these are touted as good things from the Federal Reserve’s perspective, other experts warn that this news does little to lessen the inflationary pressures still being felt across the country.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in June, the U.S. economy added 206,000 new Nonfarm payroll jobs, but April’s and May’s job numbers were both revised downward. The stock market met the news with very neutral reactions. June’s job opening report, along with May’s downwardly revised numbers, saw unemployment increase slightly to 4.1% for the last month, making the third month in a row that that number has ticked upward. This means that unemployment is continuing at its highest rate in two years. The number of jobs in the Transportation and Warehouse industries showed almost no changes in June, another tick in the “steady-as-she-goes” column.
May's Job Opening and Turnover Survey
For the month of May, job openings did adjust to a lower number, but still did not change drastically from 8.1 million jobs. Job openings decreased for the Accommodation and Food Services industries by 147,000. Private Educational Services jobs also saw a decrease by roughly 34,000. State and Local Government, excluding Education, had increases of 117,000. Jobs in Durable Goods Manufacturing and the Federal Government rose as well, gaining 97,000 and 37,000 jobs respectively.
The quit rate for May saw no changes in the 3.5 million we saw in April, while layoffs increased minimally to 1.7 million. There were also revisions to the April Jobs report, with the number of job openings revised down to 7.9 million and the number of hires taken down to 5.6 million.
June's Jobs Report
For the month of June, Non-farm payrolls grew by 206,000. Experts still can’t seem to decide how the Federal Reserve will react to another month of wavering and contradicting numbers, but the Reserve itself still seems on track to decide on whether to lower rates by the end of 2024. With their main goal being to calm inflationary pressures, the Federal Reserve seems set on their current path. June’s report shows unemployment rate rising again slightly to 4.1%, its highest since November 2021. The labor force participation rate for June, however, increased slightly to 62.6%.
Last month, June 2024, the Healthcare industry added fewer jobs than they had been in past months, but still saw another increase of 49,000 jobs. In Government Employment, new jobs came in at 70,000; there were also large gains in Construction (+27,000) and Social Assistance jobs went up a bit as well (+34,000). There were losses in Retail Trade Employment (-9,000) and Professional and Business Services (-17,000). Once again, though, Transportation and Warehousing jobs saw no changes for June. The LZBlog will be releasing a post next week studying the outlook of the Transportation and Warehousing industry for the remainder of the year.
Conclusion
The June Jobs Report and the May Job Opening and Turnover Survey came out last week with no real surprises. The normality seems to be that while inflation seems to be calming, fears of a recession are forcing the Federal Reserve to consider an interest rate hike in December of this year. Stay tuned to the LZ Blog and our Lionzone social media to see!
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Meaghan Goldberg covers recruitment and digital marketing for Lionzone. A Patterson, GA native, after graduating from both Valdosta State University and Middle Tennessee State University, Meaghan joined Lionzone in 2018 as a digital recruitment strategist before becoming the social media manager.
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