Do you know why the June Unemployment Rate increased a tenth of a percent from 3.6% to 3.7%?
Because the Labor Force Participation Rate also increased: i.e., more and more people are entering the Labor Force. People who've quit looking for jobs in the past
are now actively seeking employment again.
Only those actively seeking employment get counted in the official unemployment rate; the more people there are seeking employment, the more people there are being counted as unemployed. (Job seekers that drop out of the labor market (stop searching) are excluded from the official number.)
So, the actual rate of unemployed people didn't increase; there's just a greater number of job seekers included in the sample.
To the casual observer, an uptick in the Unemployment Rate appears to be a negative development, but that is not the case.
Market effect
Traders view the number of unemployed people as a general signal of overall
economic health, as consumer spending is highly correlated with
labor-market conditions, and is also a major consideration for monetary policy at The Fed.
Investors tend to interpret the Unemployment Rate in relation to the LF Participation Rate as follows:
Unemployment Rate ↑ + Labor Force Participation Rate ↑ = +
Unemployment Rate ↑ + LFP Rate ↓ = -
Unemployment Rate ↓ + LFP Rate ↓ = +/-
Unemployment Rate ↓ + LFP Rate ↑ = ++
By forming a general but comprehensive view of fundamental economic data and getting a sense of the potential market implications a trader adds a valuable tool to his tool-belt
