Economics

Marred by Flaws, U.S. Jobs Report Will Again Be Tricky to Assess

  • Officials have struggled to fix misclassification of workers
  • Improvement in labor market threatened by virus, expiring aid
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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There’s no way around it: Thursday’s U.S. labor reports will be a mess.

While the June jobs data and weekly unemployment claims are expected to show further improvement in a hammered market, the actual trend may not be immediately clear when the Labor Department issues the reports at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. What’s more, the numbers could again be the subject of confusion and debate in the hours and days that follow.