New Delhi, July 3 -- WASHINGTON - American hotels and restaurants are entering peak summer season with fewer workers than they had planned for. The seasonal hiring push that normally lifts the leisure and hospitality industry in June did not arrive. Across the country, front desks ran short-staffed, kitchens absorbed the gap, and the monthly payroll numbers registered the silence.

The US economy added 57,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday, coming in at barely half the 115,000 that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.2 percent from 4.3 percent, but that decline was driven in large part by workers leaving the labour force entirely rather than by ne...