June Hiring Cools While Unemployment Holds at 4.2 Percent

July 2, 2026 – Employment increased by 57,000 in June as the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 4.2 percent, according to the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million, changed little in June. Employment continued to trend up in professional and business services, social assistance, and healthcare. Leisure and hospitality lost jobs.

The job gains come right before what some economists say will likely be a summer slowdown. “One factor that calls for some caution is the notion that there could be a summer slowdown, with the three-month average in private jobs having bottomed in August in each of the last two years,” JPMorgan Chase economist Abiel Reinhart wrote in a note on Wednesday.

Jennifer Timmerman, senior investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo, said that: “Overall, we view the broad mosaic of jobs data as consistent with labor-market stabilization from weakness in late 2025, rather than renewed strength.”

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates showed little or no change in June for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.7 percent), teenagers (14.6 percent), and people who are White (3.6 percent), Black (6.6 percent), Asian (3.9 percent), or Hispanic (5.2 percent).

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.9 million in June but is up by 286,000 over the year. The long-term unemployed accounted for 27.3 percent of all unemployed people in June.

The labor force participation rate decreased by 0.3 percentage point to 61.5 percent in June, and the employment-population ratio edged down by 0.2 percentage point to 59.0 percent. Both measures changed little over the year after accounting for annual population control adjustments.

The number of people employed part time for economic reasons changed little at 4.7 million in June. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs.

In June, the number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job changed little at 6.0 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the four weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job.

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Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force changed little at 1.8 million in June. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the four weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was essentially unchanged in June at 477,000.

Where Job Growth Occurred

• Employment in professional and business services continued to trend up in June (+36,000). The industry has added 172,000 jobs since a recent low in October 2025.
• Social assistance added 25,000 jobs in June, primarily in individual and family services (+17,000). Over the prior 12 months, social assistance had added an average of 16,000 jobs per month.
• In June, employment in healthcare continued its upward trend (+22,000) but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months (+38,000). In June, hospitals added 9,000 jobs.
• Leisure and hospitality employment declined by 61,000 in June, reflecting weaker than usual seasonal hiring. Thus far in 2026, employment in the industry has shown little net change.
• Employment showed little or no change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; retail trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; other services; and government.

The Private Sector

Private sector employment increased by 98,000 jobs in June, according to the June ADP National Employment Report produced by ADP Research in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Job creation was uneven in June. Financial activities and information were among the gainers, while leisure and hospitality delivered a sixth month of weak hiring.

The ADP National Employment Report is an independent measure of the labor market based on the anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees in the United States. ADP’s Pay Insights captures over 15 million individual pay change observations each month. Together, the jobs report and pay insights use ADP’s fine-grained data to provide a representative and high-frequency picture of the private-sector labor market.

The pace of hiring is telling a story of both supply and demand,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “We know it’s taking people longer to find work, but there also are signs of labor supply constraints in certain industries. For now, the overall effect is a slowdown in job creation.”

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Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media