Lowest Unemployment Rate since April 2008
Photo Credit MGN Online
The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5% to 5.3% with the addition of 223,000 jobs in June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Following the creation of 12.8 million jobs during 64 consecutive months of gains, the United States has its lowest unemployment rate since April 2008.
Some of the employment gains in June included 40,000 jobs in healthcare, 64,000 in business services, 33,000 in retail trade, 20,000 in financial activities, and 17,000 in transportation and warehousing.
Jarrod Luka, a first-year business student at Florida State University expressed that degrees are important when seeking jobs.
”Students who have obtained higher education are more attractive to employers,” said Luka.
He attributes the decreasing unemployment rate to new businesses –like Uber– that allow individuals to make money on their own schedule.
“The growth of new companies has given more opportunities to the general population,” Luka added.
Marquis Milton, a Florida State University macroeconomics professor who has extensive background in economics and experience ranging from the completion of his sabbatical at the Bank of Japan and working for the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco and Washington DC, noted that despite the decrease in unemployment, we have seen little to no change in wages.
He also acknowledged that the unemployment rate reached a high of about 10 percent during the recession in 2008, and that we’ve seen the unemployment rates cut in half from it’s peak.
“The one caveat to all of this is that normally when the economy picks up, you see employment growth and you also see wages starting to pick up and that really hasn’t happened much,” said Milton. “Most people are looking at the job market and want to say. ‘Ok, when do we really have full recovery in the job market?’ That’s going to happen when wages start to rise again.”
Recently, the Labor Department invested $22 million to increase training for young workers.
Raymond Pandley II, a senior at Rickards High School, and a member of the Professional Opportunity Program (POP), which provides personal and professional development, stated that he does not think he would have any difficulty finding a job once he gets out of college.
“It’s difficult to find the right job at my age. A lot of jobs for my age group now are in fast food,” Pandley said.
Zack McCoy, a Northwood Center employee who assists job seekers, noticed that there are an influx of people seeking jobs with a military background.
He said individuals seeking employment often cite difficulty in paying bills. One person confided that their mortgage was $5,000 and inquired how they can pay it with an income of $275 a week.
“The number one reason I find is that they are nowhere close to making what they need to make it,” said McCoy.
For monthly updates on the employment rate visit http://www.bls.gov/