The U.S. economy lost 44,000 jobs in July, but the unemployment rate dropped to 6.2% from 6.4% as discouraged workers left the work force, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Payrolls declined for the sixth straight month and followed a revised 72,000 drop in June. Manufacturers led the job losses with 71,000, completing a third straight year of monthly declines.
Manufacturing, one of trucking's largest and most important customers, has shed more than 2.6 million jobs over the past 36 months. The factory workweek dropped to 40.1 hours from 40.3 hours and overtime held at 4 hours.
The report said that the civilian labor force fell by 556,000 workers, suggesting poor job prospects caused people to stop looking for work, Bloomberg reported. There were 470,000 discouraged workers last month, compared with 405,000 in July 2002, Labor said.
Economists had expected payrolls to rise by 10,000 and that the unemployment rate would fall a tenth of a percentage point to 6.3%, Bloomberg said.
Labor said that employment in service-producing industries, which include banks and government agencies, rose 23,000 for the first increase in three months. However, retail employment fell by 14,300 and government employment dropped by 10,000.
Average weekly hours worked for all employees dropped to 33.6 hours from 33.7.
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