Unemployment rate stays high with just 80K jobs added

(USA) - The economy added only 80,000 jobs in June, the government said Friday, erasing any doubt that the United States is in a summer slump for the third year in a row.

It was the third consecutive month of weak job growth. From April through June, the economy produced an average of just 75,000 jobs a month, the weakest three months since August through October 2010.

The unemployment rate stayed at 8.2 percent – a recession-level figure, even though the Great Recession has technically been over for three years.

Millions of youths are finding it extremely difficult to start their careers with their unemployment rate standing at 12.8 percent, according to Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit representing young adults.

Older people are benefiting the most from the economic recovery, as workers older than 55 have snatched 58 percent of all new jobs in the past year.  

No president since World War II has faced re-election with unemployment over 8 percent. It now seems that the time has run out for unemployment to fall below 8 percent.

That would require an average of about 220,000 jobs a month from July through October – more like the economy's performance from January through March, when it averaged 226,000 per month.

United States has gained only 3.8 million jobs of 8.8, that were lost in the worst recession since the 1930s.


The economy isn't growing fast enough because three traditional pistons of the economic engine aren't firing the way they normally do:

1: Consumer spending is weeker than in any other post-World War II recovery, because of low wages and households trying to pay off the debt.

2: Housing has been a dead weight on the economy for six years.


3: Government isn't supporting the weak economy, cutting 637,000 federal, state and local jobs, since 2008.