Unemployment Rate Rises By 0.1% In June

The Labor Department has released it statistic for the month of June. It showed that about 222,000 jobs were created last month. But that wasn't enough to lower the unemployment rate, because all of those new jobs went to satisfy the growth in the civilian work force (which grew by 361,000). That means the number of unemployed workers grew from 6,861,000 in May to 6,977,00 in June -- and the official unemployment rate grew from 4.3% in May to 4.4% in June.

I expect the unemployment rate to remain relatively stable for the next couple of months -- because we are currently operating on a continuation of the last Obama budget. We won't really know if Trump's economic policy can create the jobs he claims it will until the budget is passed for 2018 (if the GOP Congress can actually get a budget passed, and if it resembles what Trump has asked for). I think it'll probably be a very austere budget that takes money out of the economy, and will negatively affect job growth.

Here are the relevant statistics for June:

SIZE OF CIVILIAN WORK FORCE

160,145,000

OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS

6,977,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

4.4%

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

Adult men...............4.0%
Adult women...............4.0%
Teenagers (16-19)...............13.3%
Whites...............3.8%
Blacks...............7.1%
Hispanics...............4.8%
Asians...............3.6%
Less than HS diploma...............6.4%
HS graduate...............4.6%
Some college...............3.8%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.4%

NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed but not in official count)

1,582,000

MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS (official + marginally-attached)

8,559,000

MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

5.3%