Another month and another miss on the jobs report. It wasn’t as bad as last month, but the report still missed expectations, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
- Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 559,000 in May, and the unemployment rate declined by 30 basis points to 5.8%.
- Economists had expected 671k jobs created in May (CNBC) & the ADP report said companies hired 978,000 workers (NewsWire)
As Heather Long noted on Twitter, “Overall, the economy has regained ~67% of jobs lost in the pandemic. About 7.4 million jobs to go”
The labor force participation rate is down 1.7 percentage points from February 2020…
- Michael Strain commented that “Wages for nonsupervisory workers grew by 6.8 percent annual rate over the month…” Strain concludes, “…Employers want workers. Workers are not coming back.” (Twitter)
So the question remains why aren’t we creating more jobs? Why aren’t these jobs reports 7 figures? Republican lawmakers will argue its extended benefits and democrat lawmakers will argue COVID-19 still has people scared of going back to work. As usual, the solution is probably somewhere in the middle. Not to mention, we still have a large percentage of working parents who are unable to go back to work until their children have somewhere to go…