Jobs report signals resilient economy

Economists are hailing Friday’s jobs report as good news for the U.S. economy. Employers added 222,000 jobs in June, the most in four months. Companies’ willingness to continue hiring signals confidence in continued growth, despite its relatively slow pace, analysts say. June’s unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, but that’s because more people started looking for jobs and not all of them found employment. The number of working Americans reached 60.1 percent, a slight dip from April, which showed the highest number since the recession ended in 2009. During the first quarter of 2017, the economy grew at just 1.4 percent, well below the 2 percent average pace for the last eight years. But economists expect growth to rebound to 2.5 percent for the year. Consumer spending has continued to rise, and the Federal Reserve has enough confidence in the economy’s continued recovery to talk about raising interest rates again.