Today was a double feature for unemployment news. The monthly Employment Situation Report came out a day early because of the 4th of July weekend. Payrolls declined by 467,000 in June (Bloomberg consensus: -435,000 to -225,000), causing the unemployment rate to creep up to 9.5% (Bloomberg consensus: 9.5% to 9.7%). The key bits:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in June (-467,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.
Job losses were widespread across the major industry sectors, with large declines occurring in manufacturing, professional and business services, and construction.

The number of unemployed persons (14.7 million) and the unemployment rate (9.5 percent) were little changed in June. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.2 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points.

The payroll number changed by 467,000 from May to June. But, if you wonder where that 9.5% comes from, you need to divide the number of unemployed, 14,729,000, by the size of the labor force, 154,926,000. These numbers are different than the payroll number. The labor force shrunk by 155,000. Employment fell by 374,000 (yes, this number differs from the 467,000). Unemployment increased by 218,000. The ranks of those no longer included in the labor force grew by 358,000. Different statistic, different numbers.

While looking through the report, one thing jumped out at me:

Employment in federal government fell by 49,000 in June, largely due to the layoff of workers temporarily hired to prepare for Census 2010.

I’ve been looking for the bump in employment numbers caused by the census, and I see a noticeable negative impact instead (FYI, this will not be the full extent of census hiring). State governments are going to be trimming payrolls while raising taxes to fix their budgets. There was an attempt to make government hiring counter-cyclical. The attempt failed last month. The only place where jobs were added was education and health services. Every other sector lost jobs.

The last thing from the monthly report I like to look for is the U-6 number from Table A-12, the alternative measures of labor underutilization (their term). U-6 is now at 16.5%, up from 16.4%. If you are looking for almost-good news, the slow growth of U-6 (the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment) is the best part of this otherwise depressing report.

The second report was the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. The 614,000 new claims number was solidly in the Bloomber consensus range of 605,000 to 625,000. It’s not a number worth celebrating, but at least it wasn’t a surprise. From the report:

In the week ending June 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 614,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 630,000. The 4-week moving average was 615,250, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 618,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 5.0 percent for the week ending June 20, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s revised rate of 5.1 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 20 was 6,702,000, a decrease of 53,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,755,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,751,500, a decrease of 13,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,765,250.

The best news here is the significant revision to last week’s data. That 618,000 was revised down from 627,000. The revision was better than the actual decrease (though at least they moved in the same direction). The unadjusted numbers tell the same story:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 556,863 in the week ending June 27, a decrease of 11,689 from the previous week. There were 368,544 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.5 percent during the week ending June 20, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 6,058,925, a decrease of 54,348 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.1 percent and the volume was 2,855,557.

Still no source of jobs, but we’ve grown accustomed to that. I’ll skip the good/bad lists, but wanted to at least give California recognition for dominating the bad list with +14,570 new claims. This was more than 4x the change of the runner up (New Jersey), and was large enough to almost completely wipe out the entire good list.

These reports came out together this morning and acted as a one-two punch for the stock futures. There was really no good news in either report.