The US economy added 215,000 jobs last month

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that the American economy added 215,000 jobs in July, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.3 percent.

This was very slightly low relative to the expectations of economic forecasters, who’d told a Bloomberg survey taken in the days before the report that they were expecting 225,000 jobs and no change in the unemployment rate.

More important in some ways than the preliminary data from July is the revisions to the May and June data that collectively added 14,000 jobs to the overall picture.

Due to some scheduling quirks, this is one of the least-anticipated monthly jobs reports in some time. That’s because the Federal Reserve does not hold a monetary policy meeting in August, so all this data will be revised and updated in early September in advance of the next meeting. People are very curious as to whether Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues will raise interest rates for the first time in many years at that meeting, but today’s jobs report doesn’t tell us anything about that question that won’t be overridden in a month.