The U.S. job numbers for July were released on Friday. As has been the case over the last few years, there are both positives and negatives of this report.
On the positive side:
- there were 162,000 jobs created in the month; and
- the unemployment rate dropped from 7.6% to 7.4%, the lowest rate since 2008.
On the negative side:
- the participation rate continues to decline - this is the percentage of adult Americans either working or actively looking for work. Significantly contributing to this decline recently has been that unemployed people have just given up looking for work.
- the number of new jobs created was well below consensus expectations from economists (they had estimated 180,000 jobs would be added).
- the job numbers from the last 2 months were revised downward by 26,000 jobs.
The Canadian job numbers for July come out next Friday August 9th at 8:30 a.m.