June is a nice month for treading water — if you happen to be in a swimming pool.
But if you are in the labor pool and trying to make your way toward a job, a stronger current in the right direction would be appreciated.
Unfortunately, the jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department showed that the economy continues to drift along at a languid pace.
"This rate of growth is right in line with the average growth rate of the last year and is a perfect example of the ongoing slog in the labor market," Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a research group, said in her written assessment.
Four Years After The Recession
The Labor Department report showed employers added 175,000 jobs in May, a slightly better number than most economists had been forecasting. But the unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 7.6 percent as more people entered the labor market, seeking paychecks but not finding them.
The latest jobs report was issued at a time when the U.S. economy is marking the fourth anniversary of the official end of the Great Recession. The economy hit bottom in June 2009 and has been growing ever since, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.