This morning’s jobs report—which marks the five-year anniversary of the official end of the Great Recession (and start of the recovery)—showed the labor market added 288,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percent to 6.1 percent. Importantly, the unemployment rate dropped largely for good reasons, with the labor force participation rate holding steady and the share of the working age population with a job rising by one-tenth of a percent. Average hourly wages grew by 6 cents, bringing wage growth over the last year to 2.0 percent.
All-in-all, this is a strong report. But it’s important to keep in mind that we still face a huge hole in the labor market, and even if we saw June’s rate of job growth every month from here on out, we still wouldn’t get back to health in the labor market for another two and a half years.