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Labor market booms and U.S. employers add more than half a million jobs

NPR

Published August 5, 2022 at 12:33 PM CDT

Employers added a surprising 528,000 jobs in July. This boost helped the unemployment rate drop to 3.5%, the lowest level in nearly 50 years. The Labor Department released the figures on Friday morning. It’s a rare positive in a bleak economic time as the labor market continues to defy fears that the economy is heading into a recession.

Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd discusses what this means for the economy with Mike Regan, senior editor at Bloomberg.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.