by Matthew Kerkhoff
Financial Sense
Not too warm, not too cold, can describe many aspects of the US economy. Take last week’s jobs report as an example. According to estimates, 287,000 jobs were created, but this did little more than balance out the previous month’s weak 11,000 figure.
Taken together, the two months put us near the 172,000 monthly jobs that the economy has averaged during 2016.
Wages fit into the same category, rising 2.6% in the 12 months through June 2016 (the highest during this recovery) but only up 1.3% in real terms during 2016.