May Jobs Report

[Jw2]

The U.S. economy added 339,000 jobs in May, overshooting Bloomberg forecasts for a 14th straight month.

While the unemployment rate rose from a 54-year low to 3.7%, the labor market has remained buoyant in the face of rising borrowing costs. The Federal Reserve — seeking to tamp down the fastest inflation in decades — has lifted its key interest rate 10 times in 14 months to relieve underlying wage and price pressures. Friday's Labor Department report showed wages grew 0.3% last month, slower than 0.5% in April. The Fed, which has been widely expected to pause rate hikes, next meets on June 14.
 
Other highlights from Friday’s report:

The economy has added an average 470,000 jobs each month since 2020, compared with about 187,000 a month in the decade before the pandemic.

In May, the labor force participation rate for Americans aged 25 to 54 hit its highest level since 2007, led entirely by women.

Black unemployment rose to 5.6% last month, from a historic low of 4.7% in April.

Jobs growth was broad-based, touching almost every sector except for information technologies.

[sine-qua-non]

Translation

It’s getting harder and harder for Americans to afford anything that we all could during the Trump administration!

CCP compromised traitor Cho Xiden is to blame of course and his sicko enablers like JW here and his motley posse of Marxist who frequent this board !

[chuck_curtis]

[Jw2]

A generally strong report. The US job market is more robust and resilient than many of us expected a year ago.

Employment gains were 339K in May, above the pre-COVID trend, and there were large upward revisions to the March/April data too. I think this is *probably* a blip in an overall downward trend, but worth mentioning that the incremental strength was seen in other data (including, shameless plug, the LinkedIn Hiring Rate).

The household survey part of the report was not as strong. The share of prime working age Americans had rocketed upward in recent months and reached a post-2001 high of 80.8% in April, but inched back down to 80.7% in May. Could be just noise, and it's still up a full percentage point over the past year - if we gain another percentage point over the *coming* year, would put us near the all-time record.

Worth mentioning that the prime-working-age labor force participation rate moved up to 83.4%, matching its highest level since 2002.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%. One thing I'd been following closely is the share of unemployment due to permanent layoffs - this went up since the summer, and one might think it would decline in May, but it didn't. It ticked up a tiny bit in May. Since the summer its increase has added about 0.15 percentage points to the unemployment rate.

The Federal Reserve is very focused on the possibility of wage growth pushing up inflation, so today's news on that front was "bad" since wage deceleration has paused in recent months. (But actually good if you are a worker hoping for a paycheck increase!) We've had a few such pauses in the past 12-15 months of overall deceleration so I don't attach much meaning to it yet.

Employment by temp agencies has historically been a good labor market weathervane. It increased in May for the first time in 4 months and has been roughly flat since the beginning of the year.

The industries with the largest employment gains were health care & social assistance (+75K), government (+56K), and professional & business services (+56K).

The only two industries to experience employment declines M-M were information services (-9K) and manufacturing of nondurable goods (-2K).

[D2D]

LOL!

The US credit rating is to be down graded once again!

Why?

Because Democrats cannot stop their mindless spending!

[Jw2]

I've seen no news media report on a credit downgrade.

Please provide a source for your statement.


Of course, I don't expect you will post, since it's not true.


The so-called credit cap crisis is 100% on radical right wing Republicans, in their desire to destroy government,

[Jw2]

Stocks rally after May jobs report tops expectations: Stock market news today

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-live-updates-june-2-2023-114824059.html


Jobs report: US economy adds 339,000 jobs in May, crushing expectations

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/may-jobs-report-june-2-2023-123218296.html


Stocks rise as House passes debt deal: Stock market news today


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-today-live-updates-june-1-2023-115051823.html