Yesterday, there was a story about a Census worker whistle-blower that reported that census workers were being counted multiple times. The whistle-blower's own boss released a letter confirming that they were being counted sometimes 3-4 times! Stock futures showed the Dow down about 200 points pre-open. U-6 was at 16.7%, an improvement over last month. The birth/death ratio added 215,000 jobs; these were not real jobs, but assumed ones!
from WSJ:
The U.S. Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls rose by 431,000 last month, the largest gain since March 2000. That followed an unrevised 290,000 increase in April.
Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires were expecting payrolls to rise by an even higher 515,000.
Taking into account revisions to prior months, the U.S. economy added an average of nearly 200,000 jobs a month in the January-May period, a positive sign for the job market as it recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.
However, the May figure was boosted by the hiring of 411,000 temporary workers for the decennial count of the U.S. population. Only 41,000 private-sector jobs were added.
In a sobering reminder the labor market will take a long time to heal, the unemployment rate, which is calculated using a separate household survey, fell only moderately, to 9.7% in May from 9.9% the previous month. Economists were expecting it to drop to that level.
Following the most severe recession that most Americans can remember, there are still around 15 million people who would like a job but can't get one. Even though the economy started to grow again almost a year ago, companies have until recently been reluctant to ramp up hiring as they awaited for more evidence of a stronger economy, and focused on producing more with fewer workers.
The report Friday showed that the private sector created 41,000 jobs in May, after adding 218,000 jobs in April. Employment in professional and business services rose by 22,000. Manufacturing continued to trend up, rising by 29,000. The industry, which has been leading the economy's recovery, has added 126,000 jobs over the past five months. Construction, a sector of the economy that remains soft, lost 35,000 jobs in May.
Total government employment, which includes state and local jobs, rose by 390,000, boosted by the influx of Census workers.
