May Jobs Report

The May Jobs Report has come out and it’s certainly bad news. Only 69,000 jobs were added in May; the unemployment rate stands “essentially unchanged” at 8.2%. Long term unemployment increased by 300,000. Additionally, the numbers for March and April were revised down. March job growth was revised from 154,000 jobs added to 143,000; April was revised from 115,000 jobs added to just 77,000 (the red line shows the unrevised numbers). The only piece of not terrible news is that the participation rate (people who have jobs plus people who are actively looking for jobs) increased. 

If numbers like these continue, job growth won’t even keep pace with population growth. Factoring in population growth the economy needs to add roughly 200,000 jobs a month to return to levels of unemployment seen in early 2008 by 2015, and recent growth is nowhere close.

One curious part of the jobs report is that the unemployment rate for Asians has fallen from 7% to 5.2% in the past year. The figure isn’t seasonally adjusted so it could be misleadingly low. I have no idea why that’s happened so make what assumptions you will.