We had another big month for employment in June, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. The economy added 288,000 jobs for the month, and the headline unemployment rate dropped from 6.3 percent to 6.1 percent, the lowest it's been since September of 2008.
June would have been the biggest month for new jobs since January of 2012, when we added 360,000 - except that this morning the BLS also revised April's number upward from 282,000 to 304,000. June marked the fifth straight month that the economy has added more than 200,000 jobs, and we haven't seen that since the year 2000.
The recent strong employment figures stand in stark contrast to GDP growth, which slipped by an alarming 2.9 percent in the first quarter of this year. Most economists expect that number to rebound strongly in the second quarter, and today's jobs number bolsters that optimism. The Commerce Department's first estimate for second quarter GDP growth will be out at the end of this month, on July 30.
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