80,000 Jobs Created in June

WASHINGTON, DC-The Department of Labor reported that the US economy created 80,000 jobs in June, almost of all of which were in the private sector. It also said the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2%. The monthly report, released Friday morning, was very much a story of a national labor market that is still growing—but at a far slower pace than it did at the beginning of the year. While some jobs were added in the professional and business services sector, employment in other major industries changed little over the course of the month—a pattern that emerged a few months prior to June.

The upshot is that in Q2, employment growth averaged 75,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 226,000 for Q1. Employment in manufacturing, for example, continued to edge up in June, with 11,000 jobs added. For Q1 this sector added an average of 10,000 jobs per month, compared with the 41,000 per month during Q2.

Healthcare also saw an increase in hiring in June, with 13,000 plus jobs added, as did wholesale trade at 9,000 jobs. Mining and logging, construction, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, leisure and hospitality and government, by contrast, showed little or no change.

There were some bullish signs from the report, Scott Homa, research director with Jones Lang LaSalle, tells GlobeSt.com, including growth in temporary employment, which is often a precursor to permanent hiring, and an uptick in average hours worked. “Those two indicators affirm that the labor market has not deteriorated and should continue its gradual recovery, barring any catastrophic developments in the Eurozone,” he notes.

For the commercial real estate industry specifically, Homa continues, the implications of the report on the office market can be viewed as generally favorable. “Especially in light of the continued drive to maximize space efficiency by large employers,” he says, “we need to see robust job growth to fuel occupancy gains in the office market. While the velocity of the economic recovery is not as swift as many would like, it’s helping to establish stability and will likely signal some growth ahead as pent-up demand accumulates.”

Or as Cassidy Turley summarized the small bump in its recent White paper: "None of the economic data looks particularly robust at the moment, but it is not falling off a cliff either. The US economy appears to be settling in at a positive but slow rate of growth, and property markets should continue to experience slowly improving fundamentals. That’s fewer fireworks than we had hoped for at this stage in the recovery, but at least the campfire log is still burning."