Employers Add 80,000 Jobs in June
Saturday, July 7th, 2012 -- 6:53 AM
-U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third straight month of weak hiring that shows the economy is still struggling three years after the recession ended.The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said in its report Friday.
The economy added an average of just 75,000 jobs a month in the April-June quarter. That's one-third of the 226,000 a month created in the first quarter.
For the first six months of the year, U.S. employers added an average of 150,000 jobs a month. That's fewer than the 161,000 a month for the first half of 2011. And it shows that the job market is weakening.
The stock market opened sharply lower. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 124 points in the first minutes of trading, to 12,772, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 11 points, or 0.8 percent.
A weaker job market has made consumers less confident. They have pulled back on spending, even though gas prices have plunged since early spring.
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