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Friday, June 3, 2011

Employment: Update May 2011

The misery continues! Last month I reported a gain of 244,000 jobs, but this month the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the April figure downward, to 205,000—thus we start with a loss of 39,000 jobs. In May the economy gained a mere 54,000 jobs, and if we net out the revision for April, the actual gain drops to a mere 15,000 jobs. That’s what I call misery.

To recap. In the 2008-2009 period we erased 8.66 million jobs from the economy. Since the first day of 2010, we’ve recovered 1.7 million jobs; that’s the same number as last month—because the gains don’t show up in rounding. Last month I showed a 19.7 percent recovery of the Great Recession losses, this month I show 19.9 percent, not even a full percentage point advance.

Mrs. Economy, invited upstairs to the bedroom for just a brief frolic—just a little fun, it’s been a long time, dear, a lo-o-o-ng time—and yet she once more seems to have a headache. Ah, well. Deep sigh!

The data shown are from this BLS press release.

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