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June Employment Increases

Encouraging Increases in June Employment Rate

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released encouraging data in the June Employment Situation Summary for 2020. The US unemployment rate declined to 11.1%, down 2.2 percentage points. US employment rose by 4.8 million in June, compared to May’s increase of 2.7 million.

This encouraging 7.5 million-person gain reflects “a partial resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed due to the coronavirus pandemic in April and March, when employment fell by a total of 22.2 million in the 2 months combined.” That leaves 14.7 million more people to employ in order to return to pre-COVID levels recorded in February.

The biggest gains have been in the leisure and hospitality sector (which also suffered the greatest losses) but professional and business services added 306,000 jobs in June.

The quality of employment also improved in the last month. The number of full-time employees working part-time hours due to economic reasons dropped by 1.6 million in June to 9.1 million people. This number is still more than double what we saw in February but June’s increase is a good sign.

While the nation has plenty of recovery work ahead, the increased re-employment rate affirms what we have been seeing for weeks – employers are starting to hire again!

We think it is particularly important to highlight these recovery signs because it is so easy to be discouraged during stressful times. There is a perception among some candidates that we talk to that there are just no jobs out there and they shouldn’t even bother looking. The US BLS reports that just about the only employment number that hasn’t changed is the number of “discouraged workers.” The number of people “who believed that no jobs were available for them, numbered 681,000 in June, essentially unchanged from the previous month.”

For those of you who are stressed, frustrated and disheartened – we hear you and we want to help! We are seeing national and industry-specific employment gains and we have reason to believe these numbers will continue to increase. Now is the time to be updating your resume, reconnecting with your network, browsing our job board and jumping on your job search. And, as always, we want to know how you’re doing  – feel free to reach out through our poll and comments or contact us directly.