Jobless Rate Drops, but So Do Payrolls; Employment Falls by 44,000
The U.S. labor market continued to weaken last month as businesses shed jobs, workers put in fewer hours and about half a million people gave up looking for work, the Labor Department reported yesterday.</br></br>The jobless rate declined to 6.2 percent, from 6.4 percent in June, entirely because of the drop in the size of the workforce -- a person must be actively seeking a job to be counted among the unemployed.</br></br>And while the economic recovery appears to be gaining strength, economists warn that it could be many months before growth becomes robust enough to generate significant numbers of new jobs.</br></br>Overall, payroll employment dropped by 44,000 jobs in July, the sixth monthly loss in a row, as gains in a few industries partially offset larger declines elsewhere, including a huge 71,000 loss in manufacturing jobs. Payroll job losses in May and June also were larger than reported earlier, the department said.</br></br>The number of factory workers has now fallen every month for three years, for a total decline of 2.7 million, nearly 16 percent since the middle of 2000.