Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in July, and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in retail trade, food services and drinking places, financial activities, and wholesale trade.

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 11.5 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.4 percent, edged down in July. Over the year, these measures were down by 1.2 million and 0.8 percentage point, respectively.

All this data is seasonally adjusted.

The decline in the unemployment rate was slightly better than expected while the payroll employment gain was slightly less.

But this is another month with solid numbers — job growth hasn’t been extraordinary, but it has been steadily outpacing population growth.

U-6 Unemployment (“total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force”) fell to a seasonally adjusted 14 percent, down almost a point from a year ago.

But this time is different.

As I note in my City Talk column today looking at the latest local jobs data from the Georgia Department of Labor, public employment (federal, state, and private) is virtually stagnant compared to a year ago.

I also note another sector that’s virtually stagnant: construction. That’s despite some recent and encouraging gains in virtually every other significant sector, from hospitality to manufacturing.

Just a couple of graphs from Calculated Risk that show that our local trends are a reflection of national ones.

First, here are the trends for state and local employment in recent years nationwide:

And construction jobs nationally:

Construction typically is a strong driver out of recessions; the lag in that sector is a key reason the recovery seems so sluggish.