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Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Employers delivered another solid month of hiring in June, the Labor Department reported on Friday, adding 206,000 jobs in the 42nd consecutive month of job growth.

At the same time, the unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a point to 4.1 percent, up from 4 percent and surpassing 4 percent for the first time since November 2021.
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Wage gains have also been moderating. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent in June from the previous month, and 3.9 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 4.1 percent year-over-year change in May. But in good news for workers, pay gains have been outpacing inflation for about a year.
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The market response to the report on Friday was muted, with stocks rising modestly. Yields on government bonds fell, however, reflecting traders’ increasing confidence that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates.
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Roughly three-quarters of the job gains in the June report came from health care, social assistance and government. A few other industries produced scant increases, and some, including manufacturing and retail, shed jobs overall.

… and in the frozen North:

Canada’s unemployment rate rose to a 29-month high of 6.4 per cent, data showed on Friday, highlighting that people might be losing jobs as the labour market struggles to absorb a rapidly swelling population.

The jobs report, which also showed that youth unemployment reached almost a decade high barring the pandemic years, prompted money markets to increase bets of a rate cut by the Bank of Canada this month to around 56 per cent from 40 per cent a day earlier.
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Canada lost a net 1,400 jobs in June, Statistics Canada said, against analysts’ predictions of 22,500 job gains, in further indications of weakness in economic conditions.
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Yields on the Canadian government’s two-year bonds dropped by 9.1 basis points to 3.961 per cent after the jobs report.
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The average hourly wage growth of permanent employees accelerated to an annual rate of 5.6 per cent from 5.2 per cent in May. The pay growth rate – closely tracked by the Bank of Canada (BoC) because of its effect on inflation – was the fastest since 5.7 per cent in December.
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In June, jobs were shed in full-time work, while part-time positions were added in the month.

Employment in the goods sector increased by a net 12,600 jobs, mostly in agriculture, while the services sector lost a net 14,100 jobs, led by transportation and warehousing and Information, culture and recreation.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 5th, 2024 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.