The momentum in the U.S. labor market picked up in June, new government data showed Friday, with employers adding 222,000 jobs. The figure surpassed estimates of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, who had expected an addition of 178,000 jobs in the month.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent, up from 4.3 percent in May, but it did so for a good reason — more people joining the U.S. labor force. The Labor Department also revised its estimates for job gains in April and May, raising the combined figure by 47,000 jobs.
June’s job growth was among the strongest seen thus far since President Trump took office in January, with promises to boost economic growth and bring back jobs that had moved offshore. Yet economists say the president has probably not been in office long enough to have much of an influence on the economy – and that the economy that Trump is now presiding over looks nearly identical to that at the end of the Obama administration.
“We’re been creating close to 200,000 jobs a month now for more than seven years. That’s just an incredible achievement. And that machine is still humming,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
