Not Much Change Yet

Monthly Jobs Report from the National Jobs for All Network

Bureau of Labor Statistics building in Washington, D.C.
Bureau of Labor Statistics building, Washington, D.C., February 1, 2018. Credit: Erica Fischer, CC BY 2.0 license (https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/38441753380).

The quick take on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation for June is that there were positives but also many negatives and red flags. The unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percentage point to 4.1%. A broad conclusion about this fact is not the change of a tenth but that the official rate has not risen from a range of 4 to 4.2% for a year. Better would have been the rates of 2022, 2023, and early 2024, when the official rate often stayed below 4%. But anything around 4% is, by mainstream standards, good enough. And, of course, it is better than a recession.

The Full Count
June 2025

- Officially unemployed: 7.0 million (4.1%)
- Hidden unemployment: 10.5 million (Includes 4.5 million people working part-time because they can't find a full-time job; and 6.0 million people who want jobs, but are not actively looking)
- Total: 17.5 million (9.9% of the labor force)

[There are 2.2 job-wanters for each available job.]

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While non-farm employers added a modest 147,000 jobs in June, jobs in the Federal government fell by 7,000 and have fallen by 54,000 since last June. That’s bad news for federal workers and for people who believe in the value of government services and in the gospel of more good jobs rather than fewer good jobs. After seasonal adjustments, it appeared that state and local governments added 80,000 jobs last month. But there was something hinky about that number. Some 60,000 added jobs were in educational fields. So many new school jobs in June? Not really. Apparently what happened is that fewer people than normal left the educational field in June, so after the BLS applied its seasonal expectations and adjustments, it appeared as though 60,000 educators were added. But this isn’t much of a plus for job creation. Presumably, this means fewer new hires in the coming months.

Other sectors had mixed results. Health care added 39,000 jobs. That’s good. But will that kind of increase be possible if millions of people are cut off of Medicaid and other forms of assistance? The retail and transportation sectors added few jobs, and they will be hit hard if Trump’s tariffs really take effect. And manufacturing, which was supposed to be the key beneficiary of the tariffs, lost 7,000 jobs. Given the international, interlaced structure of manufacturing, with many items partly produced in several countries, it must be a very complicated undertaking for anyone—much less the undertalented members of the Trump administration–to bring all stages of the manufacturing process to the U.S. It is likely that the number of U.S. employees in manufacturing will continue to decline or at least not grow much.

Dangers Ahead?

There are other negatives and danger signals in the June numbers. As always, official unemployment rates undercount real unemployment. Even the official rates for specific social groups were extremely high. As to the first point, the National Jobs for All Network estimates that counting hidden unemployment, the real unemployment rate for June was 9.9%, not 4.1%. That 9.9% was a slight improvement over May’s 10.1%, but not much. There is also the fact that in some categories, even the official unemployment rates are high and rising. African-American unemployment rose from 6% to 6.8%; for Black teens, it increased from 14.4% to 19.2%; and for the disabled, from 7.6% to 8.6%. Some of these numbers tend to jump around quite a bit from month to month, but they are usually quite high, they got worse last month, and they do not include a lot of hidden unemployment.

Here are other bits of bad news, but also an item that seems not so bad.

The number of discouraged workers–people who want a job but are not searching because they believe there are no jobs—rose 77% over the last year to 654,000. (A-16 in the Employment Situation) That is a huge increase.

The number of long-term unemployed people rose last month by 190,000 to 1,647,000. (Long-term means unemployed 27 weeks or more and searching for work—check A-12.) That’s a lot. The number had fallen in May by 200,000. This seems to be a rather jumpy statistic.

On the plus side, there has been no significant decline in the past few months in the share of the adult population that is working or searching for work—the labor force participation rate. It’s been just over 62% for several years.

Meanwhile, from a separate report, we have weekly information about new applications for unemployment benefits and the total number of people collecting benefits. Between 210,000 and 259,000 people filed for benefits every week over the past year. Typical were numbers in the 220,000s and 230,000s. In late May and June of this year, claims were a little higher—233,000 to 248,000. Not much of a change but something to watch.

As for those collecting benefits, from June of 2024 through mid-May of 2025, in every week more than 1.8 million people but fewer than 1.9 million were getting benefits. Starting with the week of May 17, 2025, more than 1.9 million people received benefits. Total recipients in the week of June 21, 2025, were 5.3% above those in the week of June 22 in 2024. Not a large change but, again, something worth watching.

Overall, the labor reports are a mixed bag. Some of the big numbers, such as the official unemployment rate, are not increasing and they seem low.But indicators for some groups are horrendous. We cannot be happy with overall unemployment rates of 4% or so, while there are another 5% whose unemployment is not captured in the official UE average. Nor can we be content while some groups are suffering recession- even depression-levels of joblessness.

Frank Stricker is on the board of the National Jobs for All Network and writes for NJFAN and Dollars and Sense. In 2020 he published a book called American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future (2020). He taught History and Labor Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills, for 37 years.

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