Despite sharpening trade tensions, a hefty rise in payrolls has provided the latest evidence that the American economy is strong enough to keep pulling benched workers back into action.
Six hundred thousand people joined the work force in June and started actively hunting for a job, the Labor Department said Friday in its monthly report. Of those who found one, three-quarters had been outside the pool of those officially ranked as unemployed.
The number of Americans working part time because of their inability to find a full-time position fell — as did the number of those too discouraged to bother searching.
“I’m really excited to see that the labor force is growing,” said Catherine Barrera, chief economist of the online job site ZipRecruiter.