The Labor Department on Friday reported that the economy added a seasonally adjusted 528,000 jobs in July, far more than the 258,000 economists expected to see. And the headline rate of unemployment  fell to 3.5%, back to the multi-decade low we experienced just before the start of the pandemic.
With the upward revisions to the last two months, there are now 22,000 more jobs than there were just before the pandemic. Further, the mix of these new jobs skews away from the lower paying sectors toward higher paying ones. The WSJ reports that in July, there were about a million more jobs combined in the so-called goods-producing sectorsâmanufacturing, construction, mining and loggingâplus the retail trade and warehousing and transportation sectors, than in February 2020. And there were about a million fewer jobs in the remaining service-sector industries.
Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the most hard-hit during the pandemic, rose by 96,000, but are still -7.1% below their pre-pandemic peak. And within the leisure and hospitality sector, food and drink establishments added 74,100 jobs, but are still about 635,000, or -5.1% below their pre-pandemic peak.
But it wasnât all good news. The number of people employed as a share of the working-age population was 60% last month, below February 2020âs 61.2%. If it could return to that percentage, there would be millions more Americans working. An interesting fact in the employment report was that there were 656,000 more people out sick last month than in July 2019. On to cartoons.
The Kansas vote dropped on the wicked witch:
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Pelosi sparks a flame:
Alex Jones finally grabbed by his appendage:
The US kills another al-Qaeda leader, but nothing changes in Afghanistan:
RIP Bill Russell:
