It’s Hot Outside but Cold in the Job Market
By Jared Bernstein
July 15, 2008

Opinion pieces and speeches by EPI staff and associates.

[ THIS PIECE ORIGINALLY WAS POSTED IN TPM CAFE BLOG ON JUNE 6, 2008. ]

It's hot outside but cold in the job market

By Jared Bernstein

Sweltering DC humidity arrived on schedule this morning, but it brought with it a truly lousy jobs report. I give the full low-down here, but the punchline is that the unemployment rate leapt up a big half-percent in May, from 5% to 5.5%, the largest monthly increase since the mid-1980s, and the highest unemployment rate since late 2004. Payrolls contracted for the fifth month in a row, down 49,000, led by job losses in most industries, including construction, factories, offices, and retailers.

Read the rest of this piece here.

Jared Bernstein is senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

[ POSTED TO VIEWPOINTS ON JULY 15, 2008. ]