Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré, Brad Smith, and Brian Sozzi break down the June jobs report by sector as well as the labor force participation rate.
Video Transcript
BRAD SMITH: Yeah.
INES FERRE: And just taking a look at where we’re at with the sectors where professional and business services, those employments, those increased by 74,000. Leisure and hospitality added 67,000 jobs. Healthcare rose by 57,000. Transportation and warehousing, 36,000 jobs that were added there. And manufacturing, that grew in June by 29,000 jobs and returned to its February 2020 level.
So when we’re taking a look at some of these sectors, we’re looking at construction, retail trade, financial activities, and other services and government. Those showed little change over the month in other major industries. So, interesting to see that we’re seeing job expansion there. We’re seeing job growth in those sectors.
BRAD SMITH: Yeah, particularly here, I want to focus in on the labor force participation rate as well. If you take a look at where that reading came in at 62.2%, that is just a slight tick lower here versus the 63– or 62.3% that we had seen in the prior report. Overall here, 1.1 percentage points below where we were pre-pandemic times. And so that is something to also keep in mind as broader context as we move forward here.
But Fed Chair Jerome Powell, of course, this is going to be a measure that they continue to keep tabs on within the Fed, within their meetings, and particularly placing that up against that pre-pandemic marker as well here. But again, this still below that February 2020 value here. And then the employment population ratio that, right now, it’s sitting at about 59.9%. Little changed once again, but elevated here versus the rangebound that we had seen from 61.4 to 61.7 prior to this most recent leg up to 62.3%.
INES FERRE: One other quick note– part-time for economic reasons, number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons declined by 707,000. So we had seen in the month of May that ticking up. Now it’s declined. And these are people who are working part-time because their hours have been cut or because they can’t find full-time jobs.
BRAD SMITH: Right, exactly. That’s also kind of dovetailing directly into the labor force participation side because if you have, for inflation reasons, people getting back in to the jobs equation here in the employment situation, that certainly being in focus here. Sozz, I want to toss things on over to you.