For Immediate Release: Friday, June 1, 2012
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Job creation slow, but trend still murky

In today’s Jobs Picture, EPI economist Heidi Shierholz describes the labor market forces that produced just 69,000 non-farm payroll jobs in May.  The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in April, but the rise was due to the fact that 642,000 people entered the labor force.  Shierholz contends, “This month’s numbers should not yet be read as a sign of a slowdown. Even so, payroll employment growth is nowhere near strong enough to get us to full employment anytime soon.”

National employment and unemployment data are updated monthly on The State of Working America website.