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The next couple of days will bring fireworks, hot dogs — and a new unemployment report.

At least the first two will be fun.

As for Friday's job-market assessment, the Labor Department report likely will show little or no change in the 7.6 percent unemployment rate. "There is still a general weakness in the labor market," says Daniel North, economist with Euler Hermes, a credit insurance company.

North estimates that employers added about 160,000 jobs in June, matching what most other economists are forecasting. Those forecasts may tick up a bit Wednesday because ADP, a company that tracks payroll data, said that in June, private companies hired 188,000 workers, somewhat more than expected.

But once private job gains are combined with government job cuts, the overall employment trajectory is in line with what economists have been seeing throughout the recovery: slow progress. Since late 2010, U.S. employers have been adding an average of 175,000 jobs per month.

"That's well below the 250,000-jobs-a-month pace that we need to really be growing," North said. "We're just running in place."

Unfortunately, North's dreary assessment could sum up the entire recovery, which began exactly four years ago. The economy, which had been in free fall in late 2008, hit bottom in June 2009. Then in July of that year, growth resumed.

The Two-Way

Good Signs: Jobless Claims Dip And Job Growth Picks Up

The latest employment report is encouraging to many economists because the stronger job growth doesn't appear to be just a one-month blip. But some worry that it's so strong the Federal Reserve may pull back efforts to boost the economy.

The Labor Department's newest data released Friday shows the U.S. added 195,000 jobs in June. The prior two months were also revised upward — above 190,000 for both April and May.

That's three months of more-robust job growth.

"It looks like the labor market is quite a bit stronger than we initially assumed," says Paul Edelstein, director of Financial Economics at IHS Global Insight. "That's despite some of the headwinds that are coming from overseas and from the federal sequester, so it looks like the economy is just doing better than we thought."

That said, the mandatory federal cutbacks as a result of the sequester are costing the country at least some jobs. The gains announced Friday weren't enough to push down the unemployment rate, which remains at 7.6 percent.

John Challenger heads up Challenger Grey & Christmas, which helps laid-off workers find new jobs. His firm has been tracking some of the sequester-related cuts.

"Over 10,000 of those job cuts have been made so far this year, and they're coming from all areas of the economy — prisons, schools. We saw this month a uranium enrichment plant cut jobs because an Energy Department grant had been pulled back," Challenger says. The defense and aerospace industries are also feeling job cuts, he says.

Still, the job growth in the private sector now appears to be strong enough that some people worry that the Federal Reserve might start to pull back on its efforts to boost the economy. Fed officials recently signaled that they're considering a pullback or a "tapering" of that support if the economy continues to improve. And markets have been nervous because they're uncertain as to when the Fed might act.

"Easy monetary policy has been a major plus for the economy over the past nine months or so," Edelstein says. "I'm concerned that they may have stumbled more recently by talking about tapering because then markets don't believe that the Fed is committed to these policies, and they'll be less effective."

For example, mortgage interest rates rose after the Fed began talking about this. If rates kept rising a lot, that might slow the housing recovery.

But other experts disagree.

The Two-Way

Better Than Expected Job Growth In June

The death toll has risen to three after a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed in Quebec early Saturday morning. The blistering explosion destroyed a town center, and officials say the ongoing fires are keeping rescuers from searching the rest of the area.

Police aren't saying how many other people are missing, but warn there may be more deaths to report.

Meanwhile, The Montreal Gazette says 2,000 people have evacuated the picturesque town of Lac-Megantic, about 160 miles east of Montreal and bordering Maine and Vermont. The explosion sent a huge fireball hundreds of feet into the air when the 72-car train plowed into the downtown area.

Four of those cars were carrying 30,000 gallons of crude oil from North Dakota, NPR's Dan Karpenchuk reports, destroying dozens of downtown buildings — in an area that was crowded with party-goers. Reports vary, but the Gazette puts the number of people missing at 60 right now.

"Stunned residents were crying in the streets once the extent of the disaster had sunk in," Karpenchuk says.

Company officials say a broken fuel line caused the fire, the Gazette says, though much about the accident is still unknown, like "what caused the locomotive to move on its own and catch fire."

"Authorities are still investigating what happened to the locomotive between 11:30 p.m. on Friday when the fire department put out a fire on part of the train, and 1:30 a.m. when the train exploded a few kilometres away."

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