Healthy July Jobs Numbers Don’t Rock the Boat 
By Roy Maurer 

Normalization is the overarching theme of the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). U.S. employers added 215,000 jobs in July 2015, and for the second month in a row the unemployment rate is at 5.3 percent, the lowest rate since April 2008.

“This morning’s report brought reasonably good news, though nothing exceptional,” said Jennifer Schramm, SHRM-SCP, manager of workforce trends at the Society for Human Resource Management. “Even though the addition of 215,000 jobs in July was a little under what economists predicted, it was still a decent rate of job gains and the unemployment rate did not increase. The consensus seems to be that this is not the most exciting report we’ve ever seen because there wasn’t much change, but that’s not such a bad thing because the numbers are pretty solid.”

Employment in retail trade increased by 36,000 in July, with employment trending up in general merchandise stores. The health care sector added 28,000 jobs in July, with just over half of that total being hospital jobs.

Professional and technical services added 27,000 jobs in July, employment in financial activities rose by 17,000, and manufacturing employment increased by 15,000. Employment in restaurants and bars continued to trend up in July (+29,000) and has increased by 376,000 over the year.

Mining employment continued to trend down (-5,000). Since a recent high in December 2014, employment in mining has declined by 78,000, with losses concentrated in support activities. Employment in other major industries, including construction, wholesale trade, information technology and government showed little change over the month.

Problems remain, Schramm said. “Recent surveys show that people are still not feeling very optimistic about the economy. One reason is that wages have still not seen much movement despite other areas of improvement.”
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private payrolls rose by 5 cents to $24.99.

“HR professionals are generally focused on any changes in wages because when they go up, compensation packages need to be adjusted in order to stay competitive in the talent marketplace,” Schramm said. “But though wages edged up slightly, overall wage growth has continued to be somewhat stagnant, increasing by only 2.1 percent over the previous year.”

Unemployment Holds Steady
In July, both the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed (8.3 million) were unchanged. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed were down by 0.9 percentage point and 1.4 million, respectively.

The unemployment rates in July for adult men (4.8 percent), adult women (4.8 percent) and whites (4.6 percent) showed little or no change. The jobless rates for Asians (4.0 percent) and Hispanics (6.8 percent) rose slightly, and the rate for blacks (9.1 percent) edged down 0.4 percentage point.

In July, the number of long-term unemployed people (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.2 million and accounted for 26.9 percent of the unemployed. The number of long-term unemployed people is down by 986,000 since July 2014.

Another important indicator of overall labor market health is the participation rate, which has been stuck on low for years. The civilian labor force participation rate was unchanged at 62.6 percent in July, after declining by 0.3 percentage point in June. The employment-population ratio, at 59.3 percent, was also unchanged in July.

The number of individuals categorized as involuntary part-time workers—those seeking full-time employment, but working part time—continued to drop from 6.5 million to 6.3 million. Additionally, 1.9 million people were considered marginally attached to the labor force—unemployed, wanting and available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. Among this group, 668,000 individuals were considered discouraged—not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.3 million people marginally attached to the labor force in June had not searched for work in the past month for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities, according to BLS.

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