WASHINGTON — Despite the expansion of some retail payrolls in June, general employment figures released Friday showed the road to economic recovery is still bumpy.
Department stores added 3,500 jobs in June to employ 1.48 million, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday, but specialty retailers trimmed 100 jobs from payrolls to employ 1.39 million. General merchandise stores, which include department stores and discounters, added 6,100 jobs to employ 2.93 million.
The expansion of payrolls for department stores and general merchandise stores implies that sales are at least meeting conservative targets and that the labor market is recovering at a slow pace, said John Lonski, chief economist for Moody’s Investor Services.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
“It’s highly unlikely that jobs growth will accelerate by enough to supply retailers with bigger-than-expected gains in retail sales, but at least payrolls are not shrinking,” he said. “The improvement on the labor front is not rapid enough to suggest that retailers will soon post sales gains that exceed now-modest expectations.”
Nationwide, employers cut 125,000 jobs in June. Economists expected the decline as the labor force contracted following substantial hiring of temporary workers for the census in recent months. The unemployment rate declined to 9.5 percent in June from 9.7 percent the previous month, in great part because an estimated 652,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren’t counted as unemployed. Private employers expanded payrolls by a less-than-expected 83,000 positions in June.
“The June jobs report could have been worse, but it wasn’t good,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight, noting the economy lost some of the momentum witnessed earlier this year. “It was a lackluster, mediocre employment report.”
In remarks delivered Friday morning, President Obama said, “We continue to fight headwinds from volatile global markets. So we still have a great deal of work to do to repair the economy and get the American people back to work.”
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said the employment figures were a “wake-up call” that more needs to be done to help the ailing economy.
“The economic recovery is still far too weak to power the job growth we need to offset the almost 8 million jobs lost since the recession began,” Trumka said. “Meanwhile, 14.6 million workers are formally unemployed and nearly half of them have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks.”
In the manufacturing sector, textile mills, which manufacture apparel fabric, reported flat payroll levels, employing 123,600. Textile product mills, which manufacture home furnishing and industrial fabrics, were also flat and employed 123,200. Apparel manufacturers hired 100 additional employees, expanding payrolls to 165,300.