WASHINGTON (AP) — Hiring picked up slightly in July, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent. The modest improvement could ease fears of another recession, but it wasn't enough to prevent another wild day of trading on Wall Street.

Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The figure was the best in three months. And the job totals for May and June were revised up.

Retailers, factories and health care firms were among the many industries that added workers. Even another loss of government jobs wasn't too worrisome, after considering that most of them stemmed from the temporary shutdown in Minnesota, which has since ended.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.