Below, EPI president Heidi Shierholz offers her initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 372,000 jobs added in June and wage growth continuing to decelerate. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

Wage growth is also clearly decelerating, which is enormously consequential for fed policy. Quarterly wage growth ticked down in June and has dropped substantially in recent months. It is now near its pre-COVID range. 2/ pic.twitter.com/USlGjDBdLO

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022

Put another way: nominal wage growth moderating even in the face of continued inflation is more evidence that the fed can keep labor markets tight right now without feeding inflation. 4/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022

One big concern in the jobs numbers: There is still a giant gap in state and local govt jobs—they are down 656,000 since Feb ‘20, with close to half of that, 306,000, in education. It’s crucial that state and local govts use their ARPA funds to raise pay and refill those jobs. 6/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022

Though note, we aren’t at “mission accomplished” in the private sector either. Depending on how you measure the counterfactual, the total gap in the labor market right now is around 3 million jobs, with around 2 million of that in the private sector. 8/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022

But all groups are seeing far faster recoveries *than they did following the Great Recession*. From the start of the Great Recession, it took 11.5 years for Black unemployment to get down to 5.8%, but this time around it took 2 years and 4 months. 10/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022

And no, those relief and recovery packages are not to blame for inflation. 12/ https://t.co/a3qAcf1vN5

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) July 8, 2022