WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent, a seven-year low. The numbers show the job market moving close to full health and raising expectations that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates as early as September. 
 
 The Labor Department says the unemployment rate dropped from 5.5 percent in May. The rate fell mostly because many people out of work gave up on their job searches and were no longer counted as unemployed. 
 
 Other details in the report were less encouraging: The percentage of Americans working or looking for work fell to a 38-year low. Average hourly pay was flat. And employers added 60,000 fewer jobs in April and May than the government had previously estimated. 

 Associated Press 
 
 Yes, it was that time again, folks. It was “Jobs Friday,” when for one ever-so-brief moment the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Main Street are all aligned on one thing: jobs. 
 
 This month, however, given the timing of the Fourth of July holiday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the jobs report a day early. So Jobs Friday became Jobs Thursday. 
 
 The BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 223,000 in June. The pre-release expectations of economists had been 233,000. Revisions to the prior months showed weaker job creation this spring than initially estimated. 
 
 The unemployment rate fell to 5.3% in June, compared to 5.5% the prior month. 
 
 Here at MoneyBeat HQ, we crunched the numbers, tracked the markets and compiled the commentary before and after the data crossed the wires. Here’s how it all went down.
– It's a rare "Jobs Thursday" due to tomorrow's holiday, and so America learned a day earlier than usual that the unemployment rate fell to 5.3%, with "a solid" 223,000 jobs added in June, per the AP. That's a tad bit better and worse than expectations, per the Wall Street Journal, which were 5.4% and 233,000 jobs. The rate is also a seven-year low, but writing for the Journal, Michael J. Casey brands the news an "anticlimax. Below consensus but bang in the range of steady and stable growth. No big changes to rate outlook to come from this headline at least." (The AP takes a difference stance: "The numbers show the job market moving close to full health and raising expectations that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates as early as September.") Before the numbers hit, Paul Vigna, also writing for the Journal, wasn't expecting the report to rattle the rate outlook much. His take: "With two more jobs reports coming before the Fed’s September meeting, the one at which many people now think they will begin hiking rates, the June report could say almost anything. The July and August reports will be fresher and more important in swaying the Fed’s decision on rates, is the thinking." Among the gloomier details: The percentage of Americans working or looking for work has hit a 38-year low of 62.6%, which Casey sees as a reminder that "there is still a big overhang of unemployable people in the US." There were no gains in average hourly pay, and the April and May numbers were revised downward by 60,000 jobs.