WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. unemployment fell to a seven-year low of 5.3 percent and employers hired at a solid pace in June, but other gauges of the job market drew a bleaker picture: A wave of people stopped looking for work, and paychecks failed to budge.

The figures released Thursday capture the persistently uneven nature of the recovery from the Great Recession.

The job market "remains consistent with a two-steps-forward, one-step-back expansion the U.S. economy finds itself in," said Scott Andersen, chief economist at Bank of the West.

The economy gained 223,000 jobs last month, and unemployment edged down from 5.5 percent in May, the Labor Department reported.

That is the lowest jobless rate since April 2008, when it was 5 percent. It eventually soared to 10 percent in late 2009 after the recession had done its worst.

Yet unemployment dropped this time mainly because many people out of work apparently got discouraged and gave up looking for a job. The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they're actively searching.

In fact, the proportion of Americans working or looking for work slipped to a 38-year low.

At the same time, wages have stalled, rising just 2 percent over the past 12 months.

The mixed data suggest the Federal Reserve may put off plans to raise short-term interest rates and end the stimulus effort that began in 2008. Most economists had expected the Fed to make its move in September.

Quoted:
lol

Quoted:
I don't believe a thing this administration the government or any of it's agencies says.