In a nation where 87,897,000 are no longer in the labor force, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday that just 80,000 jobs were added in June, a figure that fell short of the already low estimate of 100,000 economists predicted.
The overall unemployment rate, which does not include those who have given up looking for a job or are underemployed, remained at 8.2 percent.
In June, the unemployment rate for Latino Americans held steady at 11.0 percent, while 184,000 more African Americans remained unemployed, bringing black unemployment up to 14.4 percent. Teenage unemployment came in at 23.7 percent.
Early reaction to the much-anticipated jobs report has been negative.
“What a disappointing number,” said Jeff Savage, the regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank, to CNBC. “This was kind of disastrous. We’re not even keeping up with demographics at this point. This is not going to be liked in the markets.”
“We’re just crawling forward here,” Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, told Reuters.
The most recent Associated Press Economy Survey found that a majority of economists expect the unemployment rate to remain above 6 percent for at least four more years.