MID-DAY UPDATE: June shows lackluster job growth, oil hits $99 a barrel
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Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.
The nation’s economy created a meager 18,000 jobs in June. And the unemployment rate ticked up a notch — to 9.2 percent. Economists were expecting better especially with a better-than-expected private jobs report yesterday.
Coincidentally, the Canadian economy created 28,000 jobs last month, helped by a gain the part-time jobs to post its third consecutive month of growth.
A deal to restrain the U.S. debt and avert a looming default is not imminent as Democrats and Republicans must still overcome “serious disagreements,” House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said Friday.
Morgan Stanley analysts downgraded Google Inc shares to “equal-weight” from “overweight” Friday, citing an expected decline in margins in this year and the next.
Shares in British Sky Broadcasting fell sharply Friday after Prime Minister David Cameron said a decision will be delayed on allowing News Corp. to mount a takeover bid.
The price of oil is climbing higher as well, though. Almost $99 a barrel in New York trading.
The supply of big pickup trucks sitting on the lots at U.S. car dealerships is up right now. All the American carmakers are reportedly having problems selling pickups, despite healthy sales of smaller cars.
CBS’s ratings for its national broadcast of Boston’s fireworks display were up 22 percent over last year. But it looks like the program wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The Boston Globe reports this morning that the network altered the images so it looked like the fireworks were being launched right behind famous landmarks: like Quincy Market, the Massachusetts Statehouse and Fenway Park. Angles that would have been physically impossible. CBS, by the way, still came in a distant second in the ratings to NBC whose fireworks broadcast was legit. As far as we know.
On the heels of this week’s announcement that Facebook will offer Skype video chat on the giant social network the creator of the other social network — you know? MySpace — told PC Magazine that MySpace had one-on-one video chat way back in 2004. But the company’s founder said people weren’t ready for video chat then. And apparently aren’t really interested in MySpace now.
You can read the rest of today’s stories from the Marketplace Morning Report here.
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