Unemployment remained at 8.1% in June, unchanged from May and in line with expectations. There is little new in the bare number, but some trends suggest that the labor market gets tenser: only 34,000 unemployed found a new job, about 10,000 fewer than in previous months. There was a higher number of newly unemployed as well and for these reasons we expect the unemployment rate to rise during the summer, perhaps as high as to 8.5%.
(Martin Kupka)