The unemployment rate rose to 9.4% in May from 8.9% in April, according to a report released today by the Department of Labor.
The pace of job cuts is slowing and the month of May lost 345,000 jobs – about half as many jobs as in each of the previous six months. Still, the job market remains weak and the unemployment rate is currently at a 26-year high.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 7 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 4.5 percentage points. There were 14.5 million unemployed workers in May. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 268,000 over the month to 3.9 million and has tripled since the start of the recession.
About 2.2 million are considered marginally attached to the labor force – those who wanted to find work and looked for employment in the past year but did not count as unemployed because they didn’t actively look for work in the four weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 792,000 discouraged workers in May, up by 392,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.
In May, job losses continued to be widespread across major industry sectors. Manufacturing employment fell by 156,000 in May. Since its most recent peak in February 2000, employment in auto manufacturing has fallen by about 50%.
Employment in construction decreased by 59,000 in May, compared with an average monthly job loss of 117,000 in the industry for the previous six months. Professional and business services moderated in May, with the industry shedding 51,000 jobs compared with an average loss of 136,000 jobs per month in the prior six months.
The temporary help services industry had a relatively small loss of 7000, after dropping an average of 73,000 jobs per month over the past six months. Employment in leisure and hospitality was flat over the month after losing an average of 39,000 jobs per month during the prior six period.
Retail trade employment was down by 18,000 in May; job cutbacks in retail trade have moderated markedly in the past 2 months. Employment in wholesale trade fell by 22,000 over the month, with over half of the decrease among durable goods wholesalers.
Financial activities employment decreased by 30,000 in May. Securities lost 10,000 jobs and real estate lost 9,000. Employment in credit intermediation continued to trend down, though the May job loss was well below the average job loss for the prior six months. Employment in information decreased by 24,000 in May.
Health care was the only sector that added jobs with 24,000 new positions. The health care sector has consistently gained a moderate number of jobs each month throughout the recession, but a far cry from making up for the losses across other sectors.
The average workweek for production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls was little changed in May at 33.1 hours. The manufacturing workweek decreased by 0.2 hour to 39.3 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 2.7 hours.
In May, average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls were essentially unchanged at $18.54, seasonally adjusted. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings increased by 3.1%, while average weekly earnings rose by only 1.2%, reflecting a decline in the average workweek.
Source:
Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor
