Job Seeker Blog - Spark Hire

May Jobs Report a Disaster

The hardcore numbers for the May jobs report are out and they are not pretty. Predictions were made by several financial experts and other reports stated that at least over 100,000 jobs were added this past month in May. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics holds their release off until the first Friday of the next month, and their figured aren’t great. According to their jobs report, only 69,000 jobs were added last month and to top that off, the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent.

Amid journalistic attempts to build our morale on the job market, the facts take over. As if the dip in added jobs wasn’t bad enough, to add salt to our wounds the BLS revised the numbers from April and instead of going up, they went down. The April job’s numbers were revised from 115,000 to 77,000- a significant drop. Overall though, the job market seems unchanged from the past couple of months. The BLS reports that employment in health care increased which is not surprising seeing as though it is one of just a couple industries that has weathered the job market woes over the past couple of years. Other industries that increased their employment were transportation, warehousing and wholesale trade. It’s also not surprising to see that the construction industry declined a bit in May.

The number of unemployed in the country did little to improve and in fact pretty much stayed the same at 12.7 million. However, it is a bit surprising to see that the unemployment rate for men edged up a bit to 7.8 percent while the unemployment rate for women stayed virtually the same at 7.4 percent. Amid many reports of men still faring better than women in the job market, it’s interesting to see that more men are unemployed than women and that their unemployment rate increased.

Either way, the numbers aren’t great. In fact, they’re not even good. With such a dismal May jobs report, it’s clear that something needs to be done and that jobs are at the forefront of our country’s issues.

What do you make of this jobs report? Did you expect it to look better? Let me know what you think in the comments or tweet me @nicole_spark. I’d love to hear your opinions!

SOURCE: Business Insider
IMAGE: Courtesy of CNN Money

Nicole Nicholson

Nicole is the Content Editor for Spark Hire and mainly writes for and edits the work for the Spark News blog. She graduated in 2010 with a BA in Journalism from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. She has a passion for writing, editing, and pretty much anything to do with content. In her free time she frequents the Chicago music scene and writes reviews on shows for her own personal blog. Connect with Nicole and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter

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