The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in July

The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in July – lower than economists’ anticipated gain of 185,000 jobs.

Healthcare once again led the gains (55,000) followed by construction (25,000), leisure/hospitality (23,000), government (17,000) and transportation/warehousing (14,000).

Job gains for May and June were revised down by a total of 29,000. This brings the 3-month average down to 169,000, lower than the 218,000 from the previous 3 months.

Average hourly earnings increased by just 0.2% over June and 3.6% from a year ago. Their respective forecasts were increases of 0.3% and 3.7%. The unemployment rate also rose from 4.1% to 4.3%.

On Snagajob, overall job postings are up 18% month over month and up 69% year over year driven mostly by gains in the Retail (+16%), Education (+14%) Automotive (+24%) and Accounting/Finance (+121%) and Construction (+27%) industries.

Here’s your roundup of key insights from the report:

New York Times: "114,000 jobs, while not as good as we’ve been running, on a long-term basis, is a reasonable number."
USA Today: "Immigration helped increase the labor force participation rate - the share of adults working or looking for jobs - to 62.7% as the workforce expanded by 420,000 people. That's a good thing because it relieves worker shortages and puts downward pressure on pay increases that have stoked inflation. But it results in higher unemployment."
CNBC: “Men in their prime working years, between ages 25 and 54, saw a big jump in labor force participation, to 90 percent from 89.6 percent. That’s the highest share since 2009.”

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