A shockingly lackluster jobs report for June on Friday deepened doubts about the economic recovery, sent stock prices lower and fueled polarizing debate about the national debt.</p><p>U.S. employers added just 18,000 jobs last month, and the national unemployment rate edged up to 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent in May.</p><p>&#x93;Even as we speak you can hear economists revising down their second-half forecasts,&#x94; said Paul Kasriel, economist at Northern Trust Co. in Chicago. </p><p>He lowered his economic growth forecast to 2.2 percent for the rest of the year &#x97; well below consensus estimates that had topped 3 percent. </p><p>&#x93;The open question is whether this is temporary and will quickly reverse itself over the next couple of months, or whether this is an adjustment to a slower permanent growth rate,&#x94; said Steven A. Wood, chief economist with Insight Economics.</p><p>Even though the recession ended two years ago, job creation has lagged compared with past recoveries. Weak job recoveries in other recent recessions indicate many lost jobs may never come back.</p><p>In the June report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revised downward the job numbers it first reported for April and May, slicing 44,000 jobs.</p><p>Despite net job gains the last three months, the number of unemployed workers has risen by 545,000 since March, and the jobless rate has gone up by 0.4 percentage point.</p><p>&#x93;Ouch,&#x94; said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director at Moody&#x92;s Analytics, citing &#x93;spooked employers&#x94; worried about U.S. government wrangling and the global economy for the bad job numbers. </p><p>After analyzing other economic indicators, economists surveyed by Bloomberg had coalesced around an expected job gain of 125,000 for June.</p><p>Outlooks and the stock market had been improving amid reports that retail sales were rebounding and that the job market might be doing better. </p><p>Stocks slumped immediately Friday after the jobs report was released but then recovered somewhat. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down a half percent.</p><p>Gary Burtless, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, noted that to bring employment back to its prerecession level &#x93;we would need to add about 11 million new jobs. At the pace of job growth we have seen since the start of the year, that task may take decades.&#x94;</p><p>Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist for Mizuho Securities USA Inc., pointed to companies that &#x93;continue to focus on cost cutting instead of expanding their businesses in the search of profits.&#x94;</p><p>Employers consistently say in surveys they are concerned about tax increases and higher health care expenses.</p><p>A standout statistic in the June employment report was the loss of 39,000 government jobs. Federal employment dropped by 14,000, and jobs in state and local governments continued their steady decline since the second half of 2008.</p><p>Job numbers in most private-sector industries were &#x93;essentially unchanged&#x94; over the month, the bureau said. But, as expected in the summer months, the leisure and hospitality sector grew by 34,000. </p><p>For employees on private, nonfarm payrolls, average hourly earnings fell by 1 cent to $22.99, and the average workweek decreased by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours.</p><p>Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have grown by 1.9 percent. Meanwhile, the inflation rate has risen by 3.6 percent.</p><p>Among working-age Americans, only 64.1 percent were working or looking for work in June. That civilian labor force participation rate is the lowest since March 1984, when the job market was struggling to recover from the double-dip recession of the early 1980s.</p><p>The share of the population with a job also slipped, to 58.2 percent. About 44.4 percent of the 14.1 million unemployed persons have been out of work for six months or more.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Politicians react</span></strong></p><p>In a Rose Garden news conference, President Barack Obama said that when Congress reached an agreement on the debt limit, businesses would gain confidence to add workers.</p><p>White House chief economist Austan Goolsbee said the June numbers showed the need to extend a payroll tax cut, approve pending trade agreements and create a federal infrastructure bank.</p><p>AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said job market improvement needed &#x93;a robust Surface Transportation Act so we can put people to work fixing and modernizing our roads, highways and bridges.&#x94;</p><p>But Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, said the June report &#x93;shows the failure of Obamanomics.&#x94; He said &#x93;burdensome and costly regulation, out-of-control spending and the threat of tax hikes on middle-class families and businesses are a choke chain preventing job creation, economic growth and the recovery.&#x94; </p><p>Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the chairman of the House Small Business Committee, also said he wanted to cut government spending, lower taxes and remove &#x93;burdensome regulations.&#x94;</p><p>Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said jobs would grow along with tax, energy and regulatory policies that make U.S. manufacturers more competitive internationally.</p><p>Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, countered that what was needed was congressional renewal of current federal unemployment insurance programs, which are scheduled to phase out for workers who become unemployed beginning this month.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Economic prospects</span></strong></p><p>Looking ahead, the monthly Leading Indicators of National Employment report from the Society for Human Resource Management said employers expected to hire fewer workers this July than last July.</p><p>A CareerBuilder.com survey this week found that 47 percent of employers said they planned to hire between now and January, but only about one-third intended to add full-time employees. The rest look to add part-time, contract or temporary help.</p><p>At Wells Fargo Securities, senior economist Mark Vitner said job growth was expected to continue through the rest of this year, but their economists had lowered their monthly projections to 155,000 net gains, down from 185,000.</p><p>&#x93;It&#x92;s very hard for the economy to get any momentum,&#x94; Vitner said, noting that incomes weren&#x92;t likely to grow as long as growth in employment remained lackluster.</p><p>He called for a big deficit reduction package to encourage businesses to expand domestically. The prescription, Vitner said, isn&#x92;t another round of action by the Federal Reserve, which last month ended its second round of quantitative easing policy in which it purchased U.S. Treasury bonds. </p><p>Though a long-term deficit-reduction deal is needed, the economy can&#x92;t bear any large cuts in government spending, according to Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.</p><p>&#x93;It makes no sense that in an economic recovery still struggling to gain momentum, policy makers are easing up on the gas and threatening to slam on the breaks. But that is just what is happening,&#x94; Stone wrote in a statement.</p><p>Analysts generally expect July&#x92;s jobs report to be better. That&#x92;s partly because the June report, based on midmonth surveys, missed a rebound in auto industry employment that began late in June.</p><p>The industry is recovering from temporary production slumps caused by auto parts disruptions from Japan&#x92;s earthquake and tsunami.