June jobs report expected to show steady hiring and unchanged unemployment

The June jobs report lands Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, a day earlier than usual because U.S. stock and bond markets will be closed for Independence Day. Economists expect another month of steady hiring, with payroll growth near 115,000 and unemployment unchanged at 4.3%.

A Dow Jones survey pegs average hourly earnings growth at 3.5% for June, while a Reuters survey points to 110,000 new jobs, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 200,000. Payrolls rose by 214,000 in March, 179,000 in April and 172,000 in May, following several months of net losses near the end of 2025.

The headline unemployment rate has stayed between 4.3% and 4.5% since July 2025. In May, the BLS counted 7.3 million unemployed people, 7.6 million job openings and 5.2 million hires, a combination that suggests demand for workers is no longer broad enough to generate rapid acceleration. Some economists put the break-even rate for monthly job creation at roughly zero to 50,000 because immigration restrictions have slowed labor-force growth, making even modest payroll gains enough to hold unemployment steady.

Veronica Clark of Citigroup said stronger payrolls do not necessarily signal sustainably stronger demand for workers, and Dan North of Allianz Trade Americas described the market as a “no hire, no fire” environment. The share of consumers who think jobs are hard to get reached a nearly 5-1/2-year high in the Conference Board’s June finding, even as job openings edged up in May.

Real average hourly earnings fell in May because consumer prices rose faster than wages. CEPR expects health care and social services to remain the main engines of job growth, even as productivity remains weak and long-term unemployment rises. The BLS said 2.0 million people were long-term unemployed in May, up 524,000 from a year earlier.