Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, badly missing consensus estimates that had called for a gain of roughly 80,000 to 90,000 jobs. It’s the second month of outright payroll losses this year. Compounding the miss, the government revised down May and June job growth by a combined 103,000, meaning the economy has added an average of just 34,000 jobs a month over the past year—a fraction of the pace economists consider healthy.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, ticked down to 4.1% from 4.2%. But almost every economist who weighed in Friday agreed on one thing: That’s not actually good news. The rate fell not because more people found jobs, but because the labor force shrank—by 264,000, according to several estimates—as workers, particularly those age 55 and older, dropped out of the workforce altogether.
