Jobless Rate Holds at 7.6%

Expectations were slightly upended with today's release of the June jobs report: Most predictions had the unemployment rate ticking down from 7.6% to 7.5%, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 160,000 jobs created. That latter figure turned out to be 195,000 jobs—and yet the jobless rate held steady at 7.6%, reports the Wall Street Journal. Writing for the Journal, Paul Vigna calls out one interesting bit in the report: May's jobs were revised from 175,000 to 195,000. "That's two months in a row of 195,000, which is near enough to 200,000 to constitute an interesting trend."

Also writing for the Journal, Michael Derby doesn't see the report as having much of an impact on the Federal Reserve. He writes, "The labor market continues its slow improvement, but we are still some distance from the 7% mark Fed officials say will likely coincide with them ending the bond-buying program." (More unemployment stories.)