Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030047
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The increase in the jobless rate, from 6.9 percent in May, put unemployment back where it was from February through April.
Laura D'Andrea Tyson, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters after the report was released Friday that the administration was preparing a new forecast that probably would raise its estimate of a 6.9 percent average unemployment rate for the year.
No specific new projection has been decided, she said. But any increase would mean no improvement until 1994.
The revised forecast, Tyson said, also would lower the administration's estimate for overall economic growth from the 3.1 percent assumed at the start of the year to "slightly short" of 2.5 percent. She said no specific figure had been decided on.
"The pace of recovery is modest and less than we would like it to be," she said.
She stressed that the administration still believed it could generate the 8 million new jobs over four years that Clinton had promised during the presidential campaign. She said 969,000 jobs had been created so far this year.
Clinton told reporters "you can't tell anything" from the rise in June's jobless rate and the Labor Department's estimate that the economy had added only 13,000 new jobs in the month.
Some private economists, however, said that while the government's monthly reports tend to be especially volatile in June, they interpreted Friday's as solid evidence that the recovery from the 1990-91 recession is stuck in slow motion.
The report, providing the first broad gauge of the economy's performance in June, said 119.22 million people were working and 8.91 million were unemployed.
Service industries such as restaurants showed modest job growth - as they have most of this year - but more manufacturing jobs disappeared and construction added few jobs. Defense-related industries were especially hard hit.
The 13,000 gain in jobs in June was well below economists' forecasts and compares with increases of well over 200,000 in each of the previous two months.
The number of people who told the Labor Department's household survey they wanted to work but were not looking because they believed they couldn't get a job - termed "discouraged workers" by the government - averaged 1.2 million in the April-June quarter. That is up from 1.1 million the previous quarter.
In past economic recovery periods, the discouraged worker total has declined.
by CNB