U.S. economy adds 4.8 million jobs in June

National payroll growth continued as the U.S. economy added 4.8 million jobs in June, according to the latest Employment Situation Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Additionally, the unemployment rate dropped to 11.1% marking a 3.2 million decline. About 2.7 million jobs were added in May as the unemployment rate stood around 13%.

April’s report was revised down by 100,000 from a loss of 20.7 million jobs to a 20.8 million decline.

But May has been revised upward by 190,000 to an increase of 2.7 million from an original report of 2.5 million jobs gained. With these revisions, employment in April and May combined was 90,000 higher than previously reported.

Retail trade employment in June rose by 740,000, after a gain of 372,000 in May while losses totaled 2.4 million in March and April combined.

Construction employment increased by 158,000 in June, following a gain of 453,000 inMay.

These gains accounted for more than half of the decline in March and April, including a combined loss of 1.1 million jobs. Month-over-month gains occurred in specialty trade contractors, rising 135,000, with growth nearly equally split between the residential and nonresidential components. Job gains also occurred in the construction of buildings, up 32,000.

Manufacturing employment in June rose by 356,000 but is down by 757,000 since February. Transportation and warehousing added 99,000 jobs in June, following declines in the prior 2 months and losses of 588,000 positions in April and May combined.

Wholesale trade employment rose by 68,000 in June but is down by 317,000 since February.

Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 2.1 million, accounting for about 20% of the gain in total nonfarm employment for June.

“The country is undergoing extraordinary times and extraordinary movement is happening in the jobs data," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. "The near 5 million job additions in a single month in June is off-the-chart the best ever by a wide margin, and comes on top of 2.7 million job gains in the prior month. However, much more needs to occur to overcome the 20 million job losses in April."

Yun notes that job movement in the right direction is encouraging with more hiring needed among home builders.

"The housing market is clearly in a V-shaped recovery and more home construction jobs need to be added," he said. "Commercial real estate, however, will lag far behind, especially for office and retail sectors.”

The average hourly earnings for all employees fell by 35 cents to $29.37. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees decreased by 23 cents to $24.74 in June. 

The Bureau reported that decreases in average hourly earnings largely reflect job gains among lower-paid workers;

The average workweek for all employees decreased by 0.2 hours to 34.5 hours in June. In manufacturing, the workweek rose by 0.5 hours to 39.2  hours, and overtime was unchanged at 2.4 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.2 hours to 33.9  hours. 

The complete June Employment Situation Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics can be accessed here.