Jobs creation too slow to help the recovery U.S. payrolls declined by 125,000 in June; jobless rate fell to 9.5 percentVideo President Barack Obama said Friday that employment growth was headed in the right direction. Perhaps, but it's doing so at a glacial pace that threatens to stall the recovery.
On the surface, the employment report released Friday by the Labor Department was a mixed bag: Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October; businesses added a net total of 83,000 workers, the sixth straight month of private-sector job gains; and unemployment dropped to 9.5 percent — the lowest level since July 2009 — from 9.7 percent.
Scratch deeper and you'll find troubling trends worming their way through the recovery.
The jobs loss in June was driven by layoffs among 225,000 temporary government jobs for the census effort. More layoffs are expected in the coming months.
The drop in the unemployment rate came because more than 650,000 people gave up looking for jobs and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren't counted as unemployed.
And the increase in private sector jobs was lower than expected, although still more than double the hiring in May.
The latest figures suggest businesses are still slow to add to their staffs amid a weak economic recovery. Many economists were hoping to see more private-sector job growth, which would fuel the economy by boosting consumers' ability to spend.
