August 4, 2017

Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in July

The American economy added 209,000 new jobs last month, 90,000 of which were needed to keep up with population growth. This means that net job growth clocked in at 119,000 jobs. That’s an OK number, about the same as last month and equal to the average of the past three years. The headline unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 4.3 percent, all of it due to an increase in the number of employed people. A net of about 150,000 people re-entered the labor force, and the labor participartion rate ticked up slightly.

Hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees went up at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. Inflation is currently running at 1.6 percent, so that’s pretty good. If we could only keep this up for a year or two, we might have a real recovery. All in all, this was a modestly positive report with no real downsides.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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