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10 JOB GROWTH WEAKER THAN EXPECTED U.S. payrolls grew less than expected in July, a potential sign that the labor market recovery might be cooling after an early summer hiring spike. According to the Department of Labor, the economy added 209,000 jobs last month, coming in under the 233,000 predicted by econo- mists. e national unemployment rate ticked up from 6.1 percent to 6.2 percent. While weaker than anticipated, July's payroll figures mark the sixth consecutive month that employment has grown by at least 200,000, the longest streak since 1997. Meanwhile, payrolls for May and June were revised to reflect slightly stronger growth, coming up to increases of 229,000 and 298,000, respectively. e biggest gains in July were seen in professional and business services (+47,000 jobs), manufacturing (+28,000), retail trade (+27,000), and construction (+22,000). As of July, nearly 9.7 million people in the United States were counted as unemployed, an increase of 200,000 from June. e change reflects a surge in people returning to the labor market, which brought the labor participation rate up to 62.9 percent. In less encouraging news, out of those Amer- icans who are unemployed, nearly a third have been jobless for more than 27 weeks. At the same time, about 7.5 million Americans are employed part-time for economic reasons (such as having their hours cut back), while an addition of 2.2 million are "marginally attached," meaning they're not in the labor force but have looked for a job sometime in the last year. About a third of that group are classified as "discouraged"—not currently looking for work because they believe there is nothing for them. e July report comes during a big week in economic news. e Commerce Department reported annualized GDP growth of 4.0 percent in the second quarter, a sharp turn from the 2.1 percent contraction reported in the first quarter. While the Q2 estimate is likely to come down in future revisions, analysts still took it as a sign of a reversal of momentum for the economy. Also last month, the Federal Reserve an- nounced plans to continue tapering its monthly asset purchases, keeping its policy on track to close by the end of 2014. ough the latest data indicates there's still some slack in the labor market, analysts see little reason for the Fed to veer from its current path. "[T]here is nothing here that changes our view that the Fed will begin to raise rates in March next year, a little earlier than most ex- pect," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics. Among other indicators: the average work- week for all employees on nonfarm payrolls was 34.5 hours, unchanged for the fifth straight month. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings just barely inched up to $24.45. CORELOGIC: FALLING FORECLOSURE INVENTORY IN JUNE CoreLogic published its monthly National Foreclosure Report with data from June 2014, which indicates that foreclosure inventory is down 35 percent from June last year. Foreclosures fell from 54,000 to 49,000 on a year-over-year basis. e report further indicated that foreclo- sure inventory in the United States shrank for 17 consecutive months as of June 2014 and fell below 650,000 homes by the end of that month, but the month-over-month rate of decline in inventory is not expected to last. Mark Fleming, the chief economist for CoreLogic, commented that the current state of national foreclosures is not entirely positive, though there are certainly some positive trends: "While 32 straight months of year-over-year decline in the foreclosure rate is cause for celebration, the total number of homes still in the foreclosure process remains almost four times as high as the average in the early 2000s." ere are some concerns that the fore- closure inventory will soon dwindle down to the foreclosures that are the most difficult to complete, namely those in judicial states where the foreclosure processes are complex and lengthy. States with the greatest inventories were New Jersey, Florida, New York, Hawaii, and Maine, while states with the highest number of completed foreclosures in the year ending in June were Florida, Michigan, Texas, California, and Georgia. e states with high inventory are outliers in the current state of foreclosures, as "Most of the U.S. has reduced its shadow inventory to pre-recession levels," according to Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. Completed foreclosures did rise 2.7 per- cent month-over-month up from 48,000 in May, a number that is still more than double the national average from before the financial crisis. Nationwide, CoreLogic found that 648,000 houses were in a stage of foreclosure as of June 2014, and that 596,554 foreclosures were completed in the twelve months ending this past June. If concerns about lingering foreclosure inventories prove true, it may be several years yet before the national inventory shrinks back to pre-recession levels.

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