U.S. Economy Accelerates with 287,000 Jobs in June

With Breitbart News predicting an acceleration of U.S. manufacturing would mean no recession this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that employment jumped by 287,000 jobs in June ,as hiring rebounded from a two-month slowdown.

Despite negative economic shocks from the Orlando terrorist attack and the UK Brexit vote, the U.S. jobs growth performance beat the every one of the estimates by the 39 Wall Street economists in the Bloomberg Survey, and was 107,000 higher than the average of the group.

Job growth for the three months of the second quarter averaged 147,000 a month. That was down from 200,000 in the first quarter, but considered a good performance in the face of a strong U.S. dollar due to economic turmoil in Europe and China.

The national jobless rate actually rose from 4.7 percent to 4.9 percent, but that was only because more people returned to the work force as jobs seemed plentiful.

Breitbart reported earlier that with the Institute of Supply Chain Management’s “Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index” surging by a strong 1.9 percentage points to a 53.2 reading in June, that the economy was poised to accelerate. Factories began ramping up with payrolls with a 14,000 increase. That was the best performance in 5 months, and followed a 16,000 decline in May.

The service sector has been leading the U.S. economy in 2016. The Institute of Supply Chain Management’s “Non-Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index” registered a booming reading of 56.5 in June. June leisure and hospitality payrolls jumped 59,000, health care employment climbed by 58,400, retailers boosted jobs by almost 30,000, and governments added 22,000 workers.

With the strike at Verizon Communications being settled early in the month, June payrolls were boosted by the return of 35,100 workers. But the rest of the job gain was due to solid gains across the nation.

The “Labor Force Participation Rate” that has relentlessly crumbled from 65.7 percent when President Obama took office in 2009, actually ticked up by one tenth of a percent to 62.7 percent. The Labor Department’s underemployment rate also dropped slightly in June to 9.6 percent. But 5.8 million that want full-time jobs are still stuck in part-time jobs.

Wages continue to grow at above inflation, as employers are being forced to pay up for skilled workers. The average hourly earnings measure was climbing at a 2.6 percent year-over-year rate in June.