WASHINGTON: A boost in consumer spending helped create jobs in one sector last month and prompted a slight monthly decline in the Lehigh Valley’s unemployment rate, a state labor analyst said Tuesday.
The four-county unemployment rate fell in June to 5.2 percent, down two-tenths of a percentage point from May and June 2015. It marked the first decline since March, when the rate stood at 5 percent. It also came in well above January’s 4.4 percent, which was the lowest since August 2007, before the Great Recession. The seasonally adjusted nonfarm job total in June stood at 356,000, up about 200 jobs from the previous month, but down 300 jobs from June 2015. By seasonally adjusted, the government takes into account fluctuations during the year, such as holiday hirings.
On an unadjusted basis, nonfarm jobs rose by 2,400 between May and June, to 363,000. “Obviously, you want to see the rate go low and stay low, but … we’ve gotten back to where we were, pattern-wise, before the recession,” said Steven Zellers, an analyst with the state Department of Labor & Industry. “We’ve gotten rid of the effects of the recession and back to normal fluctuations [in the monthly rate].”
