Dive Brief:
- May saw the lowest monthly job gain in the U.S. since 2010, with just 38,000 jobs added vs. the monthly average of 200,000 seen over the past several years, CNN Money reported.
- At the same time, the U.S. unemployment rate was at its lowest since 2007 at 4.7%, largely because many people have recenty dropped out of the labor market, experts said.
- The majority of new jobs were in healthcare, which added 46,000 jobs, followed by hotels and the government, while jobs were most notably lost in mining, information, and manufacturing.
Dive Insight:
The May gains in healthcare came from increases in ambulatory health care services (24,000), hospitals (17,000), and nursing care facilities (5,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.
It added that over the year, healthcare employment has so far seen a total increase of 487,000 jobs.
Aside from healthcare, however, analysts took the overall report as bleak.
"There's one word for it, which is just shocking," Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America, told the AP. "Unfortunately it does look like a trend. It's not great news."
While the unemployment rate is low, the BLS noted the impact of "discouraged workers" as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.6%, almost the lowest in four decades. It also noted an increase in workers involuntarily working part-time, with a May increase of 468,000 such workers after little change since November.
The report is expected to lower the likelihood federal officials will raise interest rates in June as they had previously hinted.