It’s good news,bad news time for Romney and Obama.
The US monthly job report is out for July and based on the numbers, it looks like good news for the president and bad news for his White House challenger, Mitt Romney.
U.S. employers added 163,000 jobs in July, a hopeful sign after three months of sluggish hiring.
The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent in June.
July’s hiring was the best since February. Still, the economy has added an average of 151,000 jobs a month this year — enough to keep up with population growth but not enough to drive down the unemployment rate.
“After a string of disappointing economic reports … we’ll certainly take it,” said James Marple, senior economist at TD Economics.
The government uses two surveys to measure employment. A survey of businesses showed job gains. The unemployment rate comes from a survey of households and is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the size of the labor force. In July, more people said they were unemployed, while the size of the labor force shrank even more.
Economists say the business survey is more reliable.
via EURWeb
