June jobs report: Economy adds 80K jobs
CBS
(AP) WASHINGTON - U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third straight month of weak hiring that shows the economy is struggling.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent.
The economy has added just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That's one-third of 226,000 a month created in the first quarter. Job creation is also trailing last year's pace through the first six months of 2012.
A weaker job market has made consumers less confident. They have pulled back on spending, even though gas prices have plunged.
High unemployment could shift momentum to Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. An Associated Press-GfK poll released last month found that more than half of those surveyed disapproved of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy.
Popular on MoneyWatch
- How to stop the mediocrity pandemic
- Reverse cell phone lookup service is free and simple
- LinkedIn: 3 tips for building a better profile
- Lawmakers say Apple dodged billions in taxes
- What homeowners should do before - and after - a tornado
- Top five 529 college plans
- How to organize your job hunt
- Top 10 professional life coaching myths
1. We're still ADDING private sector jobs, and have been for the last 28 consecutive months. We LOST hundreds of thousands of them every month of the last YEAR of Bush's presidency.
2. We added more jobs than last month.
3. Online job postings went up in May, and up again in June. It takes 1 - 3 months for employers to fill positions, so there's reason to believe we'll see better job reports in the coming months.
4. Yesterday's job report from ADP said we added 176,000 private sector jobs in June, not 80,000.
5. Obama proposed the American Jobs Act last fall that could have added over a million more jobs since then. Most of it has been blocked by Republicans in Congress.