June Jobs Report: Daylight Waning
Aaron Terrazas
Chief Economist at Glassdoor | Jul 5, 2024
The latest jobs numbers are out from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What do they mean for job seekers, employers and investors? Here’s a quick take from Glassdoor’s Chief Economist Aaron Terrazas.
Daylight is waning for the seemingly endless post-pandemic jobs boom. The June jobs report shows continued steady employment gains, with U.S. employers adding a healthy 206,000 jobs to their payrolls in June – another exceptionally strong month for the U.S. labor market by conventional benchmarks.
But the foundation is shaky, and cracks are increasingly visible beneath the surface metrics. Job gains for the past two months were revised sharply downward – for the second consecutive month. The unemployment rate ticked higher, driven by individuals out of work for 27 weeks or more, and annual wage gains fell below 4%.
Key stats:
- Payroll employment grew by 206,000 in June, down from 218,000 in May. Payroll gains for April and May were both revised sharply downward by a combined 111,000. The public sector, social services, healthcare, and construction accounted for 87% of total payroll gains in June.
- The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1%, the highest rate since November 2021 and above where it stood during the two years preceding the pandemic. The increase in the unemployed population (+162,000) was driven entirely by individuals out of work for 27+ weeks (+166,000). The number of people unemployed 27+ weeks is now at its highest since February 2022 — and above where it was in 2018-19.
- Average hourly earnings slowed to +3.9% on an annual basis, down from 4.1% in May. Unrounded, annual earnings gains for private-sector workers was 3.858%, so conventional rounding perhaps slightly understates the slowdown.
Summer jobs are plentiful for pre-grads, but scare for post-grads
Labor for participation is diverging between younger Gen Z (age 16-19) and older Gen Z (age 20-24) – a reminder that generational experiences in the jobs market are not uniform.
For individuals age 16 to 19 years old, the labor force participation rate was 37.2% in June 2024, steadily increasing over the past year from 36.4% in June 2023 and above its pre-pandemic (2015-2019) trend of 35%. Labor force participation for these workers is now around its highest rate since summer 2009. By contrast, among individuals age 20 to 24 years old, the labor force participation rate is flat from a year ago at 71%, and down slightly from its pre-pandemic trends of 71.1%. Of course, the younger workers are more likely to be part-time and are less likely to have post-secondary degrees.
Work absences due adverse weather hit a 21-year June high
About 83,000 workers reported not working due to weather related disruptions in June (not seasonally adjusted), the highest number of weather-related June absences since 2003. For women, it hit its highest level since records begin in 1976.
Early summer is historically a lull in weather related workplace absences, which tend to peak in late summer (hurricane season) and during winter. But early summer absences due to adverse weather have been rising as unseasonal storms and intense heat become more frequent.
Additional charts
Aaron Terrazas
Aaron Terrazas is chief economist at Glassdoor. He oversees the Glassdoor Economic Research program, providing research, analysis and commentary on today’s evolving workplace and fast-changing labor market. Previously, Aaron served as the director of economic research at the trucking startup Convoy, and served in a similar role at the real estate marketplace Zillow. He started his career as an economist in 2012, supporting the work of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Macroeconomic Analysis at the United States Treasury Department, and also worked as an analyst on immigration and labor markets at the the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. He was educated at The Johns Hopkins University and at Georgetown University.
