Less Dumb Investing

The U.S. added a solid—but not spectacular—147,000 jobs in June, showing that the labor market still has some legs. But if you zoom in a bit, the pace of hiring is clearly slowing. Businesses are navigating a mess of trade wars and immigration crackdowns, and it’s starting to show up in the numbers.

Roughly half of the job growth came from state and local government hiring, which takes some of the shine off the headline. The private sector only added 74,000 jobs—the weakest month in eight months.

The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% from 4.2%, but not because there was a rush of hiring. The real driver was that more people left the labor force entirely and stopped looking for work.

We’re in an environment where companies aren’t doing mass layoffs, but they’re also not hiring aggressively. If you lose your job right now, it’s taking longer to find another one.

The jobs number was strong enough to keep the Fed on hold. A miss would’ve reignited talk of a July rate cut, but this likely pushes that conversation further out. The Street was expecting 110,000 jobs—so we did beat expectations, but not for the right reasons.

• State and local governments added 73,000 jobs, while federal employment declined again. That’s now six straight months of losses at the federal level—the longest streak since the pandemic.
• Healthcare and social services added 59,000 jobs. Construction, hospitality, and restaurants also posted gains.
• Most other industries were flat or negative. It’s not a broad-based recovery—it’s concentrated and uneven.

Wage growth slowed. Average pay rose just 3.7% year-over-year, the smallest gain in 12 months and roughly back to pre-COVID levels. That points to a softening labor market—employers aren’t competing as hard, and workers don’t have as much leverage.

We also saw small upward revisions to prior months: May is now at 144,000 jobs, April at 133,000.

For context, the economy added an average of 134,000 jobs per month in the first half of 2025. That’s a step down from 168,000 during the same stretch last year.

The job market and broader economy are under strain from tariffs and global trade disruption. But markets are already pricing in the likelihood that the worst of it may be behind us. Stocks are back at all-time highs, and there’s renewed optimism around new trade deals being negotiated.

There’s also a potential tailwind: Congress is moving on a bill to cut taxes and reduce regulatory burdens. That could give the economy some added momentum.