The U.S. economy added 57,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2 percent.
Economists had forecast 114,000 jobs and a steady unemployment rate.
The labor market in the U.S. has experienced a significant shift away from dependence on an immigration-driven workforce. Jobs numbers that may seem anemic compared with recent years may actually indicate healthy—even robust—growth under current conditions, according to economists.
Many economists now estimate the so-called “break-even” rate of job growth—the rate required to keep unemployment from rising—may be as low as zero. By contrast, when immigration was running at higher levels from 2021 through 2024, the economy needed to add more than 100,000 jobs monthly to keep pace with labor-force growth.
Retirements are also driving down the growth of the labor force, as an increasing number of members of the large baby boom generation leave work and, later, smaller generations fail to fully replace them.
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