By Thomas Cooley and Peter Rupert
The BLS announced that total nonfarm employment increased by 213,000 in June with 202,000 of that from the private sector. Early forecasts were in the 195k range. In addition, April employment was revised up 16,000 and May 21,000. The only large decline occurred in retail trade, shedding 21,600 jobs. Since January, 2008, employment is about 9% higher and services has increased about 12%. Construction employment losses after 2008 were large and is now nearly back to the 2008 level. 
Average hours of work remained at 34.5 and average hourly earnings increased from $26.93 in May to $26.98 in June and up 2.74% since June of last year. In real terms, using the CPI, wages have not risen over the previous year as the CPI also increased about 2.7% since June of 2017.
The household survey showed that the employment to population ratio remained at 60.4, the labor force participation rate increased from 62.7 to 62.9, and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.05%.
The BLS also announced the newest Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey, showing the level of vacancies fell slightly, from a revised 6.8 million to 6.6 million. Moreover, in nearly all regions the number of vacancies is about the same as the number of unemployed persons…although in the Midwest there are 326,000 more vacancies than unemployed persons.
