Jobs Report: Unemployment Rate Steady at 7.6%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June jobs report today, estimating that the American economy added 195,000 jobs over the last month, beating the somewhat pessimistic expectations of forecasters. The unemployment rate remained steady at 7.6%. This could be termed a "status quo" jobs report - not terrible news, not fantastic news, but a sign of an economy slowly

The labor force participation rate was essentially steady in June, as were the number of long-term unemployed. What did bump up was involuntary part-time workers - an additional 322,000 workers were employed only part-time, for economic reasons. As the American Enterprise Institute's Jim Pethokoukis mused, this might be because of the way that Obamacare's regulations will incentivize part-time workers for many companies.

The more broad U-6 unemployment rate, which measures the underemployed and discouraged as well as the unemployed, actually ticked up from 13.8% to 14.3%. That's a discouraging sign, erasing the gains made on U-6 since February this year.

The BLS report also revised previous estimates upward, estimating that 70,000 jobs were added over what they had previously reported over April and May. This is important to remember, as later revisions can and will change the tenor of this report.