Today’s jobs report showed the economy added 850,000 jobs in June, for an average gain of 567,000 over the last three months. This is the fastest monthly job growth since August of last summer. 1/ 
It is important to pay attention to this three-month moving average to understand the trend, rather than focusing on the data in a single month since monthly numbers can be volatile. 2/ whitehouse.gov/cea/blog/2021/…
Out economy still has not fully recovered as employment remains about 6.8 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level. 3/
Leisure and hospitality added 343,000 jobs in June, by far the most of any industry. It has led job growth for the last five months. 4/
Government added 188,000 jobs overall; within government, State and local education added 230,000 jobs, although State and local government employment outside of education lost 37,000 jobs. 5/
Looking at the three-month average, leisure and hospitality has added 326,000 jobs on average over the last three months. Government has added about 100,000 jobs on average. 6/
The pandemic has disrupted traditional seasonal patterns of hiring. For example, State and local education hired fewer people for the past school year given Covid restrictions, and laid off workers earlier than normal due to school closures. 7/
Typically, this sector sees layoffs in the summer, when fewer school employees are needed. But since the numbers were already low due to earlier layoffs, there were fewer people to let go. 8/
The increase in jobs, therefore, is partly a reflection of the fact that fewer people were laid off, not that more were hired. This information is important to note in order to fully understand how hard it is to interpret seasonal factors in the pandemic-affected economy. 9/
Labor force participation held steady at 61.6 percent. Labor force participation can bounce around month-to-month but has been about 61.6 percent for the last three months. 10/
The prime-age (25 to 54) labor force participation rate increased by 0.4 percentage points to 81.7 percent. 11/
(The figure above normalizes labor force participation to 100 in February 2020 for easier comparison) 12/
The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.9 percent, but a broader measure of unemployment fell below 10 percent for the first time in the pandemic as the number of people working part-time for economic reasons fell. 13/
As the pandemic has stretched on, long-term unemployment has increased. About 42 percent of the unemployed are long-term unemployed (27 weeks and over). This is lower than it was in April, but higher than it was in May. Pre-pandemic, it was about 20 percent. 14/
In June, 2.9 million people were ultra long-term unemployed (52 or more weeks, this number is not seasonally adjusted), about 250,000 more than in May. 15/
The ultra long-term unemployed are more likely to be Black or Hispanic than one would expect from the Black and Hispanic share of the labor force. 16/
White workers are less likely to be ultra long-term unemployed than one would expect, while the Asian worker share of the ultra long-term unemployed is roughly proportionate to their share of the labor force. 17/
As the Administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and unemployment figures can be volatile, and payroll employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision. 18/
Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data as they become available. 19/
The full blog is now live here: whitehouse.gov/cea/blog/2021/…
Appendix for twitter: as CEA wrote in a blogpost earlier this week, historically the previous month's job growth has been predictive of the next month's job growth. This relationship has broken in the pandemic.
That analysis looked at seasonally adjusted numbers. In a normal economy, non-seasonally adjusted job growth in one month is not predictive of hiring in the next since there may be fluctuations due to seasonal differences.
Seasonal patterns are not of macroeconomic concern since the labor market eventually evens out. Thus, the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusts these numbers so that we can analyze hiring trends accounting for typical seasonal patterns.
In recent months the last month of non-seasonal adjusted numbers has become predictive of the next month’s job growth. This pattern could break at any time and it is unclear how to interpret it or whether it is useful moving forward. But it is interesting.
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