Quick Facts:
- Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 390,000 in May.
- Unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6 percent.
- Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in retail trade declined.
- The number of unemployed remained essentially unchanged at 6 million.
- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) little changed at 1.4 million.
- The number of job leavers – that is, unemployed persons who quit or voluntarily left their previous job and began looking for new employment – declined by 29,000 to 763,000 in May.
Looking Forward:
- The U.S. economy continued to see healthy job growth in May, indicating the labor market is still strong despite growing fears of a recession amid sky-high inflation and an increasingly aggressive Federal Reserve.
- Job gains were broad-based, with the biggest increases in the pandemic-battered leisure and hospitality industry (84,000), professional and business services (75,000) and transportation and warehousing (47,000). Nearly every industry gained positions last month, with one notable exception: Retail, which shed nearly 61,000 jobs.
- Businesses are eager to onboard new employees and are raising wages in order to attract workers as they confront a labor shortage. There were roughly 11.4 million open jobs at the end of April – near a record high – while the number of Americans quitting their job is also well-above pre-pandemic levels.
- Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has acknowledged there could be some “pain associated” with reducing inflation and curbing demand but has pushed back against the notion of an impending recession, identifying the labor market and strong consumer spending as bright spots in the economy. Still, he has warned that a soft landing is not assured.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
