A Boffo Jobs Report, but Puzzles Linger

So much for secular stagnation. Thanks to the headline figures and revisions for previous months contained in the Labor Department’s jobs report for June, which was released a day early because of the July 4th holiday, we know that, since the end of March, the economy has generated more than a quarter of a million jobs a month. For June, the payroll figure was 288,000, well above economists’ expectations.

During the past three months, the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.7 per cent to 6.1 per cent, and it’s now at its lowest level since Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall of 2008. Even the long-term unemployed, the biggest victims of the Great Recession and its aftermath, are seeing some relief. Since March, the number of people who have been out of work for more than six months has fallen by more than six hundred and fifty thousand. Last month alone, the figure fell by almost three hundred thousand.

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