3.5%. let s break it down by race. the hispanic unemployment rate rose .1%. black unemployment rate fell .2%. seema mody joins us this morning. good seeing you. what does this report tell us about the economy in general? well, jose, the jobs market in july did moderate. it is a sign that rising interest rates and what the federal reserve is doing to bring inflation down is starting to have an impact on slowing down what has been a red hot labor market. we did see the unemployment rate also dip back to 3.5%. that s a near record low. separately the labor participation rate remaining consistently high. and that s why many economists, their takeaway is that this is a goldilocks report. just strong enough, not too strong, a moderation in growth if you will. it comes as wall street is trying to gauge how this report could influence the fed s next month, but so far, markets are
in 1953, the labor participation rate among that cohort was 98%. today it s 89%. of course, we ve seen mass illegal immigration undercut american jobs and wages, the rule of law, and our very social fabric. meanwhile, washington politicians have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a broken university system which has churned out students deep in debt and in positions where it is almost impossible for them to be successful and to start families. deaths due to op oats and depression andings i tee has risen more. over the past decade life expectancy has declined and been declining for a number of years
that is miles away from that spike to nearly 15% back in 2020. this is historically very low. so, yes, it does feel like we got the goldilocks number we were looking for, but the fed is still likely to raise interest rates later this month. but hopefully they re closer to the end of this rate-hiking cycle. remember people used to speak of 6% as maximum employment? here we are a little below 4%. what about labor force participation? this is this other number of folks not measured in unemployment figures because they re not trying to find a job. that seems to be presenting good news here. that is very good news. we re talk about the supply of workers, and that s started to really improve. there are two reasons. one, immigration has picked up, and the other factor is more and more women are coming off the sidelines. we know that millions of women were pushed out during covid, but now we see that the labor