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Labor Report: U.S. Employers Add 157,000 Jobs, Unemployment Rate Drops to 3.9%
The pace of hiring cooled in July, while the unemployment rate edged down by 0.1 percentage point to 3.9%, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 157,000 in July, as employment increased in professional and business services, manufacturing, and health care and social assistance.
Interestingly, some of the segments hit hardest in the Great Recession are now seeing job gains. The unemployment rate for those without high school diplomas dropped to 5.1% in July, the lowest since 1992, when data on that sector first started to be gathered. That stands in stark contrast to the 15.6% unemployment rate for the cohort when the economy hit a low point in summer 2009.
Economists had worried that this segment, which makes up 7.2% of the American workforce, had been passed over forever. That fear appears to be allayed by the length of the economic recovery, as employers dig deeper to fill positions.
The Labor Dept. reports the number of unemployed people declined by 284,000 to 6.3 million in July, with both measures down over the year, by 0.4 percentage point and 676,000, respectively.
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- ◦Economy
