U.S. job growth exceeded expectations in June, confounding economic experts who had predicted a downturn in hiring due to uncertainty over trade and fiscal policy.
BLUF:
The U.S. added 147,000 jobs in June. This beat the expected gain of 110,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%. Unlike the Biden era, where all jobs reports were inevitably revised downward after the press attention had passed, the April and May reports were revised up by 16,000. This is the fourth straight month employment data has beaten the expert forecasts.
Public Sector Drove the Report:
Public sector hiring contributed 73,000 jobs in June. Most of those positions were in state and local government, with the majority being in the education sector. Healthcare employment added another 39,000 positions, primarily in hospitals and residential care facilities. Social services created another 19,000 jobs. The big gains in the private sector were construction (15,000 new jobs) and leisure and hospitality (20,000 jobs).
Federal Workforce Continues to Decline:
The federal workforce lost 7,000 positions in June, bringing losses to 69,000 since January and continuing a positive trend.
Manufacturing Down:
The manufacturing sector shed another 7,000 jobs, matching the loss in May.
Wages Up:
Wages increased by 0.2% over May and 3.7% over the past year. This continues a trend we previously reported on (White House Touts Biggest Blue-Collar Wage Increase in 6 Decades: 'We're Just Getting Started' – RedState). Wages are outpacing inflation (see Winning: May Inflation Numbers Are In – RedState), and job growth remains steady.
Foreign-born Workforce Declines:
According to the Federal Reserve, native-born workers account for all job gains since January. Foreign-born employment has decreased by 543,000 since January, while native-born employment has increased by 2,079,000. That said, it still reflects the addition of 6 million foreign-born workers since Joe Biden took office. NOTE: "foreign-born" does not imply "illegal," but "illegals" are included in the "foreign-born" number, and a non-trivial number of the unprecedented growth in that category is the direct result of Biden's open borders policy.
Summary:
The report reflects strength in the economy, but it is not across-the-board good news. The sectors growing are either government or government-adjacent, such as healthcare. The number of long-term unemployed rose by 190,000 to 1.6 million. The fact that the U.S. added this many jobs is a testament to the inherent strength of our economy. The other story it tells is that President Trump has sufficiently upended the status quo that the usual models aren't working all that well. We need to keep that in mind as media resistance to his economic program continues to grow.
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