Jobs Data Worse Than Expected

Jobs Data Worse Than Expected
Oxford, MS 6/3/2011 (PennyPayDay) — The May reading of total non-farm payrolls came in worse than expected at +54k, the same for the private sector which was +83k. The total payrolls results from the previous two months were revised lower by a combined 39k.

Private sector job gains were almost all in the Service Sector, +80k, as Goods Producing jobs only gained 3k. The best components were Business Services, +44k and Education/Health, +34k. Retail Trade was down 9k and Government jobs fell 29k, all of those losses were mostly in the Local sector, -28k; Manufacturing employment fell 5k on the month, the first decline for this sector since October. The private sector jobs gain is the smallest since last June.

Also disappointing was the Unemployment Rate which rose one tenth to 9.1%, a one tenth decline was forecast. The Household survey showed an increase of 105k in the number of Employed, but also an increase of 167k in the number of Unemployed. The Employed to Population Ratio remained at 58.4%. However, the U6 Jobless Rate fell one tenth to 15.8%.

The average duration for Unemployment rose to 39.7 weeks, another record high.

The Birth/Death model kept things from being even worse, with a decent gain of 206k for the not seasonally adjusted payrolls.

The best news in the report was a gain of 0.3% for the average hourly wages and the one tenth uptick in the average work week to 34.4 hours.