May Employment Report

The Employment Report is out and employment increased by 431,000 jobs in May, 411,000 of those being the temporary Census positions. Manufacturing, temporary help services, and mining added jobs, while construction employment declined. Overall, the unemployment rate fell .2% to 9.7%.

While I’ve read many blogs throughout the day responding to the report, Mark Thoma at Economist’s View explains very well that while this growth is good, it’s not good enough:

We need 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs each month just just to keep up with population growth, so … we still aren’t making net gains in terms of accommodating new workers. And with millions of workers still unemployed, a growth rate for jobs that simply keeps up with population growth isn’t enough, jobs need to grow faster than population growth if we are going to reabsorb the unemployed into the workforce.