US employers add a solid 372,000 jobs in sign of resilience

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers shrugged off high inflation and weakening growth to add 372,000 jobs in June, a surprisingly strong gain that will likely spur the Federal Reserve to keep sharply raising interest rates to try to cool the economy and slow price increases.

The unemployment rate remained at 3.6% for a fourth straight month, the government said Friday, matching a near-50-year low that was reached before the pandemic struck in early 2020.

The robust pace of hiring shows that businesses still want to add workers to meet high customer demand — a trend that should ease concerns that the U.S. economy might be on the verge of a downturn. The durability of the job market suggests that the economy remains on firm footing, at least for now.

“For all the doom and gloom that’s in the markets right now, companies themselves still seem pretty upbeat on their own progress,” said James Knightley, chief economist at ING, a bank. “It sort of dampens the near-term fear that we’re heading into an impending recession.”

Numerous sectors of the economy posted strong job gains in June. Health care added 78,000, transportation and warehousing 36,000 and professional services — a category that includes accounting, engineering, and legal services — gained 74,000. And a sector that includes mainly restaurants, hotels and entertainment jobs added 67,000.