August 2, 2013.

U.S. Adds 162,000 Jobs, Continuing a Tepid Run

There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were sitting on metal bunks, one above the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by side on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap pushed back from very white hair; his face was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out of his skin in place of sweat, and one could have fancied that the others welling from his eyes were pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. It also seemed to him that he knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved, a little granddaughter perhaps, had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

WASHINGTON----U.S. employers added jobs at a slower pace in July, suggesting more steady but unspectacular economic growth heading into the summer.

"We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn't I? That's what come of trusting 'em. I said so all along. We didn't ought to 'ave trusted the buggers."

U.S. payrolls grew by 162,000 last month the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, taken from a separate survey of U.S. households, fell two- tenths of a percentage point to 7.4%, its lowest level since December 2008.

But which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted Winston could not now remember.

The latest snapshot of the job market suggests that slow economic growth may be weighing on employers. Higher taxes, federal spending cuts and slower growth abroad have held back the economy for months, though the pace of hiring has been solid so far this year.