US jobs growth picks up speed amid reopening
US jobs growth picked up speed in June as the economic reopening continued, official figures show.
Employers created a larger-than-expected 850,000 jobs last month, driven by new posts in bars and restaurants, retail and education.
Despite the boost in hiring, the unemployment rate was little changed at 5.9%, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
It comes as different industries offer incentives to battle a worker shortage.
Although the number of job vacancies has seen a record high of 9.3 million, firms such as McDonald’s and Chipotle in the hospitality industry, for example, have increased the minimum wages in their company restaurants to try to entice new staff.
The new monthly figures showed that average hourly earnings rose 0.3% last month after increasing 0.4% in May.
Although more than half of the jobs added in June were in leisure and hospitality, employment in those sectors is still down by about 2.2 million on pre-pandemic levels.
But President Biden said the figures marked “historic progress pulling our economy out of the worst crisis in a hundred years.”
He said on Friday: “We’ve now created over three million jobs since I took office, more jobs than have ever been created in the first five months of any presidency in modern history, thanks to the incredible work of the entire team.”