and the most in four months, the unemployment rate actually ticked up from 4.3% to 4.5% because more people began looking for work. let s get some analysis on today s economic news. joining us from our sister network, fox business, when you break it down, what will they find that they like and don t like? okay. well, i will tell you what. they ve got the headline number, bret, in the eight years since the financial crisis, any time we can get a 2 at the front of a six-figure job number? that can be categorized as a very hot number. that s exactly what we got for june. as you pointed out, it was better-than-expected. 220,000 soundly beat the expectation than the 179,000 people would be hired. so you ve got to ask, what drove such a robust number. government hiring was unusually strong. you saw a gain there of 35,000.
unemployment rate actually ticked up from 4.3% to 4.5% because more people began looking for work. let s get some analysis on today s economic news. joining us from our sister network, fox business, when you break it down, what will they find that they like and don t like? okay. well, i will tell you what. they ve got the headline number, bret, in the eight years since the financial crisis, any time we can get a 2 at the front of a six-figure job number? that can be categorized as a very hot number. that s exactly what we got for june. as you pointed out, it was better-than-expected. 220,000 soundly beat the expectation than the 179,000 people would be hired. so you ve got to ask, what drove such a robust number. government hiring was unusually strong. you saw a gain there of 35,000. education and health care,
freeze for government hiring. he s going to shrink government. this though does not include the military. right. this is the biggest one yesterday with respect to how americans will see the impacts of this. i have seen some critics say that this could mean for average americans longer lines at some agencies where they get government services like social security, for example, but remember, this is not going to be like the government shut down in 2013, we will have plenty of government workers filling those roles, it means they can t hire anyone new and long-term, president trump has been saying that he wants to cut the size of the federal workforce through save taxpayers money because there are jobs better duh duplicative.
six baskets, if you will. first basket was executive orders. he reinstituted the mexico city policy that says u.s. tax dollars won t pay for abortions abroad. and freezing government hiring except for the military. those were smart moves. the second is take actions. he withdrew from the trans-pacific partnership trade agreement. appointed the new chief for the fcc, a quick move and a good guy. he called the egyptian president and then gave a read-out to the press. he was there and involved in the things we expect presidents to do. then he had meetings. it was really interesting. business leaders where he had a carrot and stick. i ll cut taxes and regulations but if you open up operations abroad to sell into the u.s. market i ll give you a heavy tax. he met with labor and a
country. to continue to send checks, are we doing what we need to help folks get jobs? and that is there something that we could be doing? for instance, there are economists at aei, who have advocated instead of sending folks checks, you can offer to subsidize the wages of folks who have been long term unemployed who take a job. you could actually do direct government hiring. they note, they say this is kind of odd for somebody from the right to be suggesting. instead of mailing folks checks and saying we wish you the best of luck in getting a job, what if the government was helping to find those people positions so they have something more recent the put on their resume to help them be more attracted to an employer. those are great ideas. i want to push forward in terms of what could help folks find jobs. i would argue that since congress isn t doing anything, the least we koeld do that we owe these folks is to give them the little life lean they have right now. until we could get s