May Jobs Report: Hiring Slowed, Unemployment Stayed the Same
It’s a mixed bag, but it’s not the end of the world.
The May jobs report has good and bad news in it. I received X posts boasting about it, but a deeper look exposed yet another mediocre report.
Yes, I will dive into the numbers. You can always count on me to provide a fair assessment of any report, presenting both the good and the bad.
No fancy commentary because each of those people have an agenda.
Good News
The economy added 139,000 jobs when experts predicted 125,000.
Federal jobs helped growth under former President Joe Biden, which always made me wince.
The May jobs report showed that federal government employment decreased by 22,000 in May. Overall, it has been reduced by 59,000 since January.
Awesome. I love that stat.
The growth areas:
Health care added 62,000 jobs in May, higher than the average monthly gain of 44,000 over the prior 12 months. In May, job gains occurred in hospitals (+30,000), ambulatory health care services (+29,000), and skilled nursing care facilities (+6,000).
Employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend up in May (+48,000), largely in food services and drinking places (+30,000). Over the prior 12 months, leisure and hospitality had added an average of 20,000 jobs per month.
In May, social assistance employment continued to trend up (+16,000), reflecting continued growth in individual and family services (+16,000).
The average hourly earnings increased by 15 cents (0.4%) to $36.24. The stat helped raise the average hourly earnings in 12 months by 3.9%
The private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees average hourly earnings went up by 12 cents (0.4%) to $31.18.
The long-term unemployed decreased in May by 218,000 to 1.5 million.
The unemployment rate stayed at 4.2%. At least it didn’t increase?
Not So Good News
Speaking of the unemployment rate…
Yes, it’s good that it didn’t increase. But the rate “has remained in a narrow range of 4.0 percent to 4.2 percent since May 2024.”
Also, those jobless for less than five weeks went up by 264,000 to 2.5 million.
The long-term unemployed and those jobless for less than five weeks haven’t changed much in a year. That is not good.
Unfortunately, other main job sectors saw little change in May: mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; construction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; retail trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; professional and business services; and other services.
It turns out that losing jobs in these areas cancels out any good that would come out of losing 22,000 federal government jobs.
April to May:
- Goods – producing (overall) lost 5,000
- Manufacturing lost 8,000
- Retail trade (overall) lost 6,500
- Professional and business services lost 18,000
Administrative and support and waste management and remediation services took a big hit, losing 20,600. The sectors under it with significant losses:
- Administrative and support services lost 21,900
- Temporary help services lost 20,200
- Employment services lost 16,700
Overall…139,000 growth is just meh considering it’s “similar to the average monthly gain of 149,000.” It could be so much better.
The main reason I cannot show excitement over a jobs report is due to revisions. Look at April and March (emphasis mine):
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 65,000, from +185,000 to +120,000, and the change for April was revised down by 30,000, from +177,000 to +147,000. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined is 95,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
Blah. Major suckage. It wouldn’t surprise me if May’s revision brought the number below what the experts predicted for the month.
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Comments
added more jobs than expected, doesn’t sound like a bad thing
Side note: Notice NO Jewish pressure group is demanding that supermarket chain change its name.
Probably because the grocery chain’s name is pronounced aitch ee bee, , not hebe or heb.
What a weird take.
I’M weird.
The only reason that there is any positive economic news at all is that Trump has decided to pause his tariffs. As Senator Rand Paul and many other people have concluded, tariffs mostly hurt the working blue collar class, a group which spends most of its money on essential items. Trump is actively working to destroy his base. Go figure.
“Trump is actively working to destroy his base.”
No he’s not, you idiotic wretch.
Get the hell out of here.
Most of his base are as economically as pigignorant about foreign trade as Orange HArve.
They believe every moronic thing he says. I follow a lot of conservative experts on economics. Almost all of them think his tariff policies are idiotic and incoherent.