ARLINGTON, Texas — The forecasted U.S. growth in jobs for July did not happen. After adding 57,000 jobs in June, a recent job report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the U.S. lost 23,000 jobs in July.
Amid these statistics, Globe Life Field in Arlington was a packed house on Thursday, and it wasn’t for the Texas Rangers. Rather, thousands of job seekers looked to score a home run in employment at the North Texas Job Fair, like David Weaver.
After nearly a decade at his job, he did not expect to be part of the crowd.
“I was there seven years, and my position was eliminated,” said Weaver.
That recent layoff had him and others like him driving nearly an hour to stand in the brutal Texas heat, dressed to impress in their Sunday best and hoping to shoot their shot at the nearly 700 employers in the arena.
“I’ve really been struggling with LinkedIn, Indeed, getting callbacks, and it would just be nice to have some face-to-face,” said Weaver.
For Monica Nicholas and her adult children, the job hunt was a family affair.
“They’ve put in tons of applications and just really aren’t getting interviews,” Nicholas said. “I wonder if it’s just part of it. LinkedIn, it’s that easy apply, you know, one link, and… you get the automatic rejection email. You don’t even get looked at.”
Even though Nicholas just retired in July, she said she wants to get back to work. But the job report numbers reflect a clear struggle.
“It is a shock because, nationally, it’s a weak report,” said Patrick Soleymani, associate dean for outreach and strategic engagement and associate professor of management at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University. “I mean, the economy lost 23,000 jobs when forecasters expected a gain of 83,000 jobs. So if you look at that swing, that’s over 100,000 jobs. Swing in the wrong direction. So that is a bit scary.”
Soleymani believes the positive job report from June may be credited to the international sporting event that took over the U.S. and Texas this summer.
“It also says that some of the increases that we had seen before could have actually been because of the World Cup jobs that now don’t exist either. I mean, if you look at the report, and you look at temporary layoffs, temporary layoffs rose by 153,000 to reach 921,000 in July. So, you’re seeing a significant area there. And if you look under the hood, nationally, the losses are a bit concentrated,” said Soleymani.
The report showed a decline in employment for people working in local government, education and retail trade.
However, there were some glimmers of hope in the report for the healthcare industry and a slight decline in the unemployment rate from 4.2% in June to 4.1% in July.
“So, the demand is there. You know, people want to get in the workforce,” said Keith Sonderling, Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor. “They want better, higher-paying jobs that didn’t exist before. So, this job fair is really a testament not only to the employers who are here for these jobs, but the lines out the doors of local Texas workers who want to seize and take these opportunities.”
Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott praised the job report numbers in Texas. He said it set a record, adding more than 43,000 jobs in June, outpacing the national annual growth rate.
Even will all those new jobs, the current unemployment rate in Texas is at 4.4%. That’s more than the national average.
“So the state is growing faster, but it’s still leaving more people on the sidelines,” said Soleymani.
Unlike the national report, July job numbers for Texas are set to be released on Aug. 21.
Since 2021, Texas Republican Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne has hosted the North Texas Job Fair. Her team said it has grown every year with more companies and job seekers showing up.
They even had to change locations to Globe Life Field, but even with that location, they told Spectrum News they had to turn down some employers who wanted to participate because they had reached capacity.