The unemployment rate ticked up slightly in July to 6.2 percent as the number of unemployed increased by 197,000 from the previous month. During the past 12 months, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed people have declined by 1.1 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively. The labor force participation rate edged up a bit to 62.9 percent as the labor force increased by 329,000. The labor force participate rate has been essentially unchanged since April.
