President Donald Trump got handed an ugly jobs headline Friday. The economy lost 23,000 payroll jobs in July, and revisions erased another 103,000 jobs from May and June. Household Survey Data Both the unemployment rate, at 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 6.9 million, changed little in July. If government employment had simply remained flat, the headline number would've been a gain of 30,000 jobs. Still, shrinking government while private employers add workers is hardly the economic disaster one headline number might suggest.