Even as economists regard the latest job numbers as proof that the national labor market is cooling off, at least 187,000 new jobs were created last month.
Those new Department of Labor numbers come at the same time that the agency is reporting a 3.5% unemployment rate, one of the lowest such figures on record.
July’s 187,000 new jobs, said acting assistant Labor Secretary Julie Su, contributes to what is an “average of 218,000 jobs per month over the past three months.”
Su also noted that “healthcare, social assistance, construction, and financial activities all gained jobs in July.”
Jared Bernstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, issued a statement on the White House’s website saying that the labor market is “cooling off in expected and necessary ways while maintaining historically low levels of slack, with unemployment below 4% for a year and a half.”
While the 187,000 new jobs represent a gain over June’s report of 185,000 jobs, those numbers represent modest gains compared with April, which saw an increase of 281,000 jobs, and January up by a remarkably strong 472,000.
The most robust recent months were seen in last July’s 568,000 job gain, and the remarkable more than 904,000 new jobs recorded in February of 2022.
The construction industry saw a 3.9% job gain in July, with gains in the nonresidential, heavy and civil engineering, and residential specialty trade sectors.
Total construction employment nationally now stands at just under 8 million, up from the 7.7 million recorded in July of 2022.
“Nonresidential construction contractors continue to expand their payrolls,” observed Anirban Basu, chief economist with American Builders and Contractors, adding that “General and public works contractors collectively hired thousands of people in July.”
But Basu added that “weakness in several commercial real estate segments may help explain job losses among nonresidential contractors last month.”
Nationally, according to the Labor Department, professional, scientific and technical services jobs were up in July by 24,000; followed by the construction industry with 19,000 new jobs. The leisure and hospitality sector, meanwhile, registered employments gains of around 17,000.
While the 3.5% unemployment rate is nothing to sneeze at, according to economists, the rate was slightly lower in January of this year at 3.4%. Until the Covid 19 outbreak In March of 2020, a 3.4% mark was also achieved in both January and February of that year.
By Garry Boulard
