The jobs report looks good on the surface, not so good underneath it.
A) The jobs were mostly lousy. Look at the unemployment rates by educational attainment. The rate for people with no high school went WAY down. Yet the rate for those with high school or greater either all stayed the same or went up.
Table A-4. Employment status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment
B) the U-3 rate stayed the same but the U-6 (a much more - IMO - accurate measure of unemployment) went up slightly.
Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization
C) according to the household survey, July was a great month - 420,000 more employed. But that is just this last month and will be adjusted later (up or probably down).
But overall since March, only 197,000 more people are employed - less then 50,000 per month. And between March and June, 223,000 LESS people were employed.
That is a less-then-healthy trend and goes along with the lousy GDP numbers for that period.
And, once again, of those 420,000 more employed, the jobs went mostly to seniors (255K) and the very young (97K for 16-19's). Surely not the best paying jobs out there.
Table A-9. Selected employment indicators
Always look past the headlines.