Economy Lost 62,000 Jobs in June (Update)

Updated from 9:02 a.m. EDT.

The unemployment rate held steady at 5.5% in June, though employers continued to shed jobs for the sixth straight month, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Nonfarm payrolls decreased by 62,000 last month, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations. The figure was slightly higher than the consensus estimate of 60,000 jobs cut. The economy lost 49,000 jobs in May.

Layoffs have spread throughout the private sector, provoked by the bursting of the housing bubble and high oil prices. The construction sector has been especially hard hit, slashing 528,000 jobs since its peak in September 2006, though layoffs have been widespread across the financial sector, airline industry and manufacturing.

Several major companies -- including Citigroup(C), Goldman Sachs(GS), American Airlines(AMR), Delta(DAL) , Starbucks(SBUX) and Anheuser-Busch(BUD) -- have recently announced layoffs or are rumored to be cutting jobs to pare costs.

In similar fashion, AirTran(AAI) is reportedly slashing wages by 10%. The Labor Department reported wages rose 0.6 cents per hour, or 0.3%, last month. That compares with recent inflation rates hovering near 4%.

James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase, noted that the job market is losing momentum much faster than the broader economy, which has grown about 2% over the past four quarters. The most significant piece of the jobs report in his view is that unemployment stayed at 5.5%, indicating that "the big run-up we saw in May was not an aberration."

"The silver lining in all this is that the slow economy is forcing everybody to get more efficient and productivity is better, but that's not good news for workers," he added.