WASHINGTON–The unemployment rate in the nation’s retail and wholesale trades worsened to 5.7 percent in June, up from 5.2 percent in May and from 4.6 percent in June 2007. The national unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent.
The U.S. Labor Department this morning reported that the number of people employed in retail as a whole “changed little” during the month, but shed more than 203,000 jobs on a year-over-year basis.
This pattern applied to all retail categories tracked by HFN. Staff levels in furniture and home furnishings stores, for example, lost only 1,500 workers since May, but nearly 10,000 over the year. About the same number of workers were shed over the year from appliance and electronics stores. Department store staffs remained fairly level on a monthly basis, but declined by 6,700 since last year.