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Best Guess: 100,000 Jobs Added In July; Unemployment Stayed At 8.2 Percent

Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. Report Has Better Than Expected News:

" 163,000 Jobs Added In July; Unemployment Rate Rose To 8.3 Percent"

Our original post:

Here's what economists surveyed by Reuters and Bloomberg News expect to hear at 8:30 a.m. ET when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases figures on the July unemployment rate and employment growth:

-- Just 100,000 jobs were added to payrolls last month. That would be better than the initial estimate of an 80,000 gain in June, but well below the pace of earlier this year and not enough to bring down unemployment.

-- Which is why they're saying the jobless rate probably remained at 8.2 percent. It's been above 8 percent since February 2009.

We'll be posting about the news from the report once it's released. Check back with us just after 8:30 a.m. ET.

Related stories:

-- "Five Issues To Watch For In Jobs Report." ( The Wall Street Journal'sReal Time Econmics blog)

- - "Beware The Jobs Report Of July." ( The New York Times' Economix blog)

-- "Stocks Rebound As Focus Turns To U.S. Jobs." ( The Financial Times)

-- "U.S. Jobs Seen Weak In July, May Help Push Federal Reserve To Act." ( The Economic Times)

-- "Keeping The Biggest Secret In The U.S. Economy." ( Planet Money)

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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