June Jobs Reports Goes Off With a Bang
Posted July 3, 2014 & filed under Hiring Resources, Job Search
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June jobs report a day early and signs are good news. Employment blew beyond predictions, unemployment dwindled further, and revisions from previous months all went up. Here’s how our economy is seeing fireworks and what we can expect on the horizon.
A New Spark in the Numbers
The biggest announcement of the BLS June jobs report is the 288,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added to the economy, surpassing the 215,000 originally predicted by economists. Revisions from previous jobs reports were also fortuitous. The May jobs report was amended up from 217,000 to 224,000 new jobs and the April jobs report expanded even further from the revised 282,000 to a towering 304,000.
After a brief pause, unemployment rates continued to drop downward from 6.3 percent to 6.1 percent. Though we won’t know the unemployment rates for individual states until later this month, the May unemployment rate shows it ranges from 2.6 percent in North Dakota to 8.2 in Rhode Island.
Once again, the labor participation rate remained flat for the second month straight, remaining at 62.8 percent. When this percentage finally fluctuates, it’ll be an indicator of whether we’re out of the woods or still wandering for a bit longer.
Information Technology
The information technology sector once again offered positive news in the jobs report. On the whole, 8,700 new payroll jobs were added in the information technology sector. That breaks down to 6,900 jobs in computer systems design services, 200 jobs in telecommunications, and 1,600 jobs in data processing services.
And those numbers promise to be even higher. According to a recent report from Computer Economics, 52 percent of companies across industries expect to add IT professionals to their payroll. Dice even anticipates more cloud related jobs to open up as growing numbers of businesses attempt to maximize their full potential.
Engineering/Manufacturing
Manufacturing, which added 16,000 new payroll jobs in the June jobs report, once again saw a stark divide between durable and nondurable goods.
The cumulative number of durable goods jobs added was 17,000 with 8,900 in transportation equipment, 3,800 in machinery production, and 1,900 in primary metal refining. Furthermore, the Institute of Supply Management reports the manufacturing index at 55.3 percent, which is further signifies American manufacturing’s expansion (anything over 50 percent shows growth).
Nondurable goods lost 1,000 payroll jobs in the June jobs report. The food manufacturing sector shed 4,800 payroll jobs, offsetting the 1,900 chemical processing jobs and 900 petroleum/ coal production jobs added to the market. Until the California draught is quenched or another state takes up the agriculture mantle, we shouldn’t expect food manufacturing payrolls to bear fruit.
Furthermore, the engineering field is adding more payroll jobs to the economy. In the June jobs report, 7,200 architectural/engineering services jobs were added, which was only slightly offset by the 700 jobs lost in heavy and civil engineering construction.
Accounting
The accounting sector is still pressing onwards with new jobs. The BLS June jobs report found that 6,300 new accounting and bookkeeping jobs were added to the nonfarm payroll. That’s a sizeable increase from the 4,100 new jobs added last month and a huge jump of 17,300 jobs from the June year before.
Light Industrial
The diverse sectors that constitute the light industrial sector collectively added 1,100 jobs in the June jobs report. 2,900 new payroll jobs were added to the warehousing and storage industry while 1,800 jobs were lost in the repair and maintenance sector. The decline isn’t substantial enough to suggest further decline, so hopefully the continued resurgence of American manufacturing will once again trickle down.
If all goes well, the June jobs report and its predominately positive numbers will be a stepping stone into an equally stellar July jobs report.
[Original content on our Ashley Ellis website]
by James Walsh
