JUNE JOBS BOON

213K number beats estimates, boosts stocks

Wall Street celebrated a better-than-expected jobs report Friday with all major indexes ending the day in the green.

There were 213,000 jobs added to the economy in June, according to data released by the Labor Department Friday. The job gains beat analyst forecasts of 195,000 new positions and marked the second consecutive month of more than 200,000 jobs added.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 99.74 points — or 0.4 percent — to close at 24,456.48, while the broader S&P 500 and techweighted Nasdaq gained 0.9 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively.

Professional and business services, manufacturing and health care accounted for more than half of the job gains in June, while retail jobs fell by 22,000 — mostly offsetting gains in May.

Despite the massive job gains, the unemployment rate ticked to 4 percent — up from 3.8 percent in May — as more job-seekers entered the market emboldened by months of strong employment data.

“Generally we feel the jobs figure today was a positive signal for the economy,” Mona Mahajan, US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors, told The Post.

“We also were encouraged by the robust manufacturing jobs figure of 36,000, which implies that recent trade war rhetoric has not yet impacted jobs in this sector,” Mahajan added.

Meanwhile, wage growth, which has been a closely watched gauge for how quickly the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, held steady at 2.7 percent annual growth, the Labor Department said.

Financial markets panicked in February when data showed wage growth at 2.9 percent annually.

The relatively high pace left investors fearing the Fed would aggressively hike rates to tamp down inflation. But wage growth standing at 2.7 percent, even as unemployment stays relatively low, suggests the economy has room to run before overheating.

“Certainly we’re not seeing the screaming wage pressures that would make the Fed think that they need to hike rates much more aggressively at this juncture,” James McCann, senior global economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said

June jobs in durable goods manufacturing put a surprise finish on Friday’s manpower data — while the jobless rate rose to 4 percent after two months of consecutive declines.