unemployment rate

WASHINGTON — A weak June jobs report offered the latest evidence that the economic recovery is slowing.

Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October, the Labor Department said Friday. The loss was driven by the end of 225,000 temporary census jobs. Businesses added a net total of 83,000 workers, the sixth straight month of private-sector job gains but not enough to speed up the recovery.

Unemployment dropped to 9.5 percent – the lowest level since July 2009 – from 9.7 percent. But the reason for the decline was more than 650,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren’t counted as unemployed.

The latest figures suggest businesses are still slow to hire amid a weak economic recovery. Many economists were hoping to see more private-sector job growth, which would fuel the economy by boosting consumers’ ability to spend.A truer unemployment rate can be figured by starting with the 9.5 percent number then adding all of the people who should be working full time but are not: the discouraged non-workers we spoke of above and people who are working part time but would prefer to work full time. That unemployment rate in June was a much higher 16.5 percent, down from 16.6 percent in May. Though these people are not officially counted as unemployed, they certainly make demands on the system and probably feel pretty unemployed. The number of discouraged workers in June stood at 1.2 million, up 414,000 from a year ago.