US employers had another strong month of job creation in June, adding 206,000 jobs, further demonstrating the resilience of the US economy to sustained high interest rates.
Last month’s job growth marked a drop from 218,000 in May. But it was still a strong gain, reflecting the resilience of the U.S. consumer-driven economy, which is slowing but still growing steadily.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed the unemployment rate rose to a still-low 4.1% from 4%. And the department sharply lowered its job growth estimate for April and May by a combined 111,000.
The state of the economy is weighing heavily on voters’ minds as the presidential campaign gets underway. Despite steady hiring, relatively few layoffs and gradually cooling inflation, many Americans are exasperated by still-high prices and are blaming President Joe Biden.
Economists have repeatedly predicted that the labor market would lose momentum in the face of the high interest rates created by the Fed, only to see job creation unexpectedly strong. Yet there are signs of an economic slowdown in the face of the Federal Reserve’s series of rate hikes. U.S. gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — grew at a sluggish annual rate of 1.4 percent from January through March, the slowest quarterly pace in nearly two years.
