Employers added 943,000 jobs last month as recovery gains steam – By ABC News (MSN) / Aug 6 2021
U.S. employers added a higher-than-expected 943,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor said Friday, and the unemployment rate declined by a fraction of a percentage point to 5.4%.
A recent surge in virus cases in the U.S., propelled largely by the spread of the highly contagious delta variant, casts a shadow over the data collected in the earlier part of the month.
While the latest figures indicate the economic recovery is gaining steam, the unemployment rate still remains well above the pre-pandemic figure of 3.5% seen in February 2020. Employment in July is up by some 16.7 million jobs since April 2020, the DOL said Friday, but is down by 5.7 million from the economy’s pre-pandemic levels.
Notable job gains in July occurred in leisure and hospitality (which saw an uptick of 380,000 jobs), local government education (a rise of 221,000 jobs) and in professional and business services (an increase of 60,000 jobs), the DOL said.
