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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Employed Situation for June 2021, which reported 850,000 jobs were added in June. The number of new jobs added exceeded the expectations of 720,000 and is well above May’s gains of 583,000.
Several industries saw notable job gains, including leisure and hospitality, public and private education, professional and business services and retail trade. The retail industry added 67,000 jobs, manufacturing added 15,000 workers and transportation and warehousing jobs increased by 11,000 in June. Employment in construction saw a slight decrease from the previous month, with a loss of 7,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate rose slightly in June, from 5.8 percent in May to 5.9 percent. June’s unemployment rate is still a vast improvement from the high of April, where the U.S. faced an unemployment rate of 14.7 percent, but higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5 percent in February 2020.
Long-term unemployed, those who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more, increased by 233,000 to 4 million and account for 42.1 percent of total unemployed. The number of people who want a job but are not currently in the labor force remained steady at 6.4 million.
Along with gathering unemployment numbers, the report also found that fewer people worked from home in June.
“In June, 14.4 percent of employed persons teleworked because of the coronavirus pandemic, down from 16.6 percent in the prior month. These data refer to employed persons who teleworked or worked at home for pay at some point in the last 4 weeks specifically because of the pandemic,” the organization states.
