US Hiring Falls To Worst In 5 Years; Rate Drops To 4.7 Percent

FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2013 file photo, Jona Caldwell joins a long line of job seekers outside the Ferguson Community Center in Cordova, Tenn. The Labor Department reports on the number of Americans who applied for u... FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2013 file photo, Jona Caldwell joins a long line of job seekers outside the Ferguson Community Center in Cordova, Tenn. The Labor Department reports on the number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits in the last week on Dec. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/The Commercial Appeal, Jim Weber, File) MORE LESS
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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. hiring plunged in May to its lowest level in more than 5 years, a sign that employers turned cautious after the economy barely expanded in the first three months of the year.

The Labor Department says employers added just 38,000 jobs last month, the fewest since September 2010. Yet the unemployment tumbled to 4.7 percent from 5 percent. That is the lowest rate since November 2007.

The rate fell for a problematic reason: Nearly a half-million unemployed Americans stopped looking for work, and were no longer officially counted as unemployed.

The disappointing figures will likely raise doubts that the Federal Reserve will boost the short-term interest rate it controls at its upcoming meetings in June and July. Many analysts had expected an increase by July.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  1. The trajectory under President Obama, and all in spite of Republican efforts, from day one of his presidency, to derail any effort to improve economic condition for their own political gain. For eight years of the Bush Reign of Terror the Republicans crapped all over our metaphorical economic house, and every day of Obama’s administration they screamed, “You’re not cleaning our mess up fast enough. Put us back in charge.”
    And a “Trump trickle down” would finish creating the oligarchy promoted so well by Dubya Bush.

    http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/top-10/jobs-lost-gained-bush-obama.png

    http://radioornot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/blame-obama-Bushs-fault-smaller.jpg

  2. Trump could use the Republican formula touted by his new BFF Ayn Ryan:

  3. They always say that unemployment doesn’t look as bad because people quit looking for work.
    I always question that one. In my experience, people that want to work, do. Ambitious people just fight their way through. It isn’t like this was the first economic downturn ever, albeit it was the worst of our lifetimes.
    I got married and had babies at the tail end of the Carter years. Construction was dead so I did like 20 different jobs to make money. Most of those I didn’t care for but I had no choice. My friends and I would network and get each other hired in different places then move on when that ended.
    We never quit looking or trying and eventually we all had steady work, some of my friends stuck with the part time jobs and that became their careers.

    Lazy people will always be a thing and claim that they can’t find work but this isn’t but a mere percentage point of the total.

    Hiring may have slowed because so many people have found work and there just isn’t near as big a pool to hire from. The unemployed rate dropped, so that just as easily could be a part of it.

    Either way, it is no cause for alarm. See the good news for what it is as opposed to the gloom and doom headlines. We are at 4.7% unemployment, that is fricking amazing!

  4. “Nearly a half-million unemployed Americans stopped looking for work, and were no longer officially counted as unemployed.”

    That doesn’t compute. Job growth has been steady for many months. The economy, while not growing strongly, has also been steady. Why would 500,000 people stop looking for work?

    I suspect that there’s been an error here. Look for a major correction when they review the data. (Corrections are made every month. Sometimes they are small, sometimes quite significant.)

  5. The NYT has a gloomy headline in the Breaking News email, yet ends with this:

    And after showing signs of life in recent months, wages moved up a steady 0.2 percent for the month and a gain of 2.5 percent for the year.

    May’s job totals were affected by the more than 35,000 Verizon workers who were on strike and classified as unemployed by the Labor Department. (They returned to work this week.)

    “Underlying job growth is going to be stronger than the overall number says,” Diane Swonk, an independent economist based in Chicago, said before the release of the latest figures. “It’s a little bit deceptive in the weakness.”

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