Four consecutive months of improvement in the nonfarm payroll data came to an end in June, with payrolls dropping a worse-than-forecast 467,000. The unemployment rate ticked up from 9.5% to 9.6%.
Details are available at Examiner.com, but I wanted to share an additional chart that highlights how severe this recession has battered the labor market.
The data collected from Labor Department figures show that since employment hit its peak in the current cycle, employment has declined by 5.5%.
The drop this time around is much worse and longer than the severe recessions experienced back in the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. And it has now exceeded the short but steep recession of 1957-58.
Based on current trends and still-high jobless claims, it seems likely that we will have another sluggish number in July.
Jobless claims tick lower
In the meantime, weekly jobless claims dropped 16,000 to 614,000. The trend has been very slowly improving but remains stuck at unacceptably high levels. Continuing claims fell 53,000 to to 6.7 million and appear to have peaked.
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