U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 4-Year Low: 7.1% Level in June Stuns ...
The nationÛªs civilian unemployment rate, continuing to astound economists, plunged from 7.5 percent to 7.1 percent in June, the lowest rate in more than four years, thie Labor Department reported yesterday.</br></br>Unemployment fell for the first time below the rate inherited by the Reagan administrationÛÓ7.5 percent in January 1981ÛÓas 460,000 more Americans found work in June. The rate peaked during the last recession at 10.7 percent in December 1982. Since then the economy has added 6.7 million jobs.</br></br>Job gains have been greatest for adult men during the recovery, the Labor Department said, but last month the jobless rate for black teen-agers fell a surprising 10 percentage points, from 44.1 percent toi 34.3 percent.</br></br>President Reagan, who is expected to make the strong economic rebound a cornerstone of his reelection campaign, told the Texas Bar Association convention in San Antonio yesterday: "It is the first sin-glle administration for more than 20 years that has reduced inflation and unemployment at the same time."</br></br>According to economist Donald Straszheim of Wharton Econometrics, both measures havenÛªt declined together from the beginning off a presidential term to its end simce the Kennedy administration. The civilian unemployment rate dropped from 6.6 percent in January 1961 to 4.9 percent in 1965, and inflation measured by the consumer price index declined from 1.6 percent to 1.1 percent during the same period.