U.S. payrolls increased by 80,000 in June, falling below projections of 100,000 net new jobs and fueling doubts over the vitality of the economic recovery.
Private sector employment increased by 84,000, while the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent.
The Commerce Department raised the May job tally to 77,000 from a previously announced 69,000; however, that increase was effectively canceled out by a downward revision of the April report, from 77,000 to 68,000.
The median projection by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal called for 100,000 new jobs and for the unemployment rate to be unchanged from May.
U.S. stock markets slipped on Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 each down about 1 percent at 10 a.m.
TD Bank Economist Chris Jones called today”™s jobs report “the rotten cherry atop the half-baked economic news of the last few months.”
Jones noted in an email that only 225,000 nonfarm jobs have been created over the last three months, compared to an average of 245,000 new jobs each month from December 2011 to February 2012.
He attributed the slow pace of growth to fears surrounding the European debt crisis and to what he described as a lack of action on the part of the federal government with elections just four months away.
