The American economy gained 128,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at a sluggish 38,000 jobs. The labor force increased nicely, suggesting that people are coming in off the sidelines to look for jobs, but the employment-population ratio stayed the same as last month. The headline unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.6 percent.
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The biggest loser was motor vehicles and parts, thanks to the GM strike. The biggest gainer was leisure and hospitality. Overall, goods-producing jobs were down by 26,000 while service sector jobs were up 157,000 jobs. Government jobs were down 3,000.
Hourly wages for blue-collar workers were up 2.1 percent. With inflation running at roughly 1.7 percent these days, that’s a real hourly wage increase of about 0.4 percent. That’s nothing to write home about, but at least it’s positive.