The U.S. unemployment rate posted its sharpest one-month increase in 22 years last month, suggesting U.S. consumers already facing a housing slump and soaring gasoline prices now confront even more pressure from a weakening jobs market.
The data, which included a fifth-straight drop in nonfarm employment, should take financial-market expectations of Federal Reserve rate increases as soon as this autumn off the table.
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Nonfarm payrolls, which are calculated by a survey of establishments, declined 49,000 in May, the Labor Department said. The decline was broad-based, including manufacturing, construction, retail trade and business services. Payrolls fell 28,000 in April and 88,000 in March. Both were revised to show slightly larger drops.
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"The over-the-month jump in unemployment reflected additional workers who had lost their jobs as well as an upsurge in new and returning jobseekers," said Philip Rones, deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He cautioned that the household survey tends to be volatile between April and July due to an inflow of young people into the workforce.
There is nothing good in this report. It shows a weakening employment sector in a big way.
The year over year number is still dropping
And the unemployment rate is still increasing which it has been doing since April of last year.
The blog Capital Spectator had the following graph which shows that this months drop was terrible -- and that the entire year so far has been bad as well.
