Employment Situation

U.S. employers added a solid 559,000 jobs in May, a sign the economy continues to expand as consumers and businesses resume their normal activity amid a nationwide decline in COVID-19 infections.

The nation's unemployment rate fell to 5.8% as more jobless workers were hired and others left the labor force, meaning they've stopped looking for work altogether and were not counted as unemployed. It is the lowest jobless rate since March of 2020, when unemployment was 4.4%.

Leisure and hospitality companies led the gains, with 292,000 new jobs. The education sector added 140,000 jobs as schools returned to in-person learning. Employers in health care and social assistance added 46,000 jobs, while manufacturing, wholesale trade and transportation and warehouses gained about 20,000 jobs each.

The latest job figures were slightly lower than expected. Economists had predicted an increase of about 650,000 jobs last month.

"It's great to see a pickup to job growth, but it would have been better to see a larger acceleration," Nick Bunker, economic research director for the job site Indeed, said in a note. "Adding over a half million jobs in one month is a solid pace of growth, but we will need to keep up this tempo for quite some time to get back to a semblance of the pre-pandemic labor market."

Although hiring has been steady this year, there are still 7.6 million fewer employed workers today than in February of 2020, before the pandemic.

Half of U.S. states are ending unemployment benefits early, with officials arguing that overly generous payouts are discouraging people from seeking work. However, the economic rationale for cutting off federal cash is tenuous, most economists say. Many workers losing benefits have tried unsuccessfully to get work while dealing with caretaking obligations.

Source: CBS News