Jobless Rate Stuck at 7.3% for 6th Month

The nation’s unemployment rate remained jammed at 7.3% in July for the sixth consecutive month, the Labor Department said today in a report that cast doubt on the government’s projection of a strong rebound in the economy.

The White House has said the economy, as measured by the gross national product, will grow a strong 5% in the second half after a weak first six months of 1985.

Real GNP rose only about 1% at an annual rate from January to June.

“This report is not consistent with the Administration’s forecast of a 5% rebound,” Donald Ratajczak, an economist at Georgia State University, said.

8.2% in Los Angeles

(In Los Angeles, joblessness was 8.2% in July, while California reported a 7.8% unemployment rate.)

A total of 8.5 million workers from a civilian labor force of 115 million were unemployed last month. Total employment rose 490,000, but the work force was up by 530,000.

Nearly all of the new employment came in such service industries as retail trade and finance, the department said.

The manufacturing sector, hit by overseas competition, has lost 210,000 jobs this year. Job losses in manufacturing slowed to 7,000 last month, which most economists viewed as a sign the long downward slide was at least stabilizing.

“The overall picture that emerges (for manufacturing) is one of stagnation over the last year and only the prospects of a very modest pickup in the months ahead,” said Jerry Jasinowski, chief economist and executive vice president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers.

Bottom Reached

Regarding analysts who are saying “this is the bottom (for manufacturing employment), I wouldn’t disagree with that,” said Jasinowski. “But those who say there will be a big pickup, I certainly would disagree with that.”

So far this year, the economy has created 1.6 million new jobs, almost all of them in the service-producing rather than the goods-producing sectors of the economy, the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

But job growth appears to be slowing in some segments of the service field as well, Janet L. Norwood, commissioner of labor statistics, said.

For example, business services, one of the fastest-growing employment areas since the end of the last recession, added just 6,000 jobs in July. The business services category includes temporary help agencies and data-processing service companies.

Black Unemployment

Unemployment among blacks rose 1 percentage point to 15% while unemployment among Latinos went up six-tenths of a percentage point to 11.2%. Joblessness among teen-agers rose 1.2 percentage points, to 19.5%. Unemployment fell slightly for adult men, adult women and whites.

The length of the overall average workweek fell slightly, a bad sign.