Unemployment in U.S. Unexpectedly Fell in May: Live Updates
Restaurants and bars, health care employers and construction were among the sectors that drove the May job market improvement, based on the Labor Department’s report.
About 1.4 million people gained or took back their restaurant jobs, even as hotels continued to shed workers. About 460,000 were hired or rehired in construction, 370,000 in retail, and 390,000 in health care and social assistance. That latter boost came heavily from dentist’s offices, which took back some 245,000 workers.
The data tells the story of an employment rebound as the state and local economies began to reopen and Paycheck Protection Program checks went out, spurring rehiring and bringing workers back onto payrolls.
“The economy is still being very much buffered by stimulus,” said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America. “When that starts to wane, we will learn a lot more about the underlying health of the recovery.”
Ms. Meyer noted that more than half of the job gains in May — 1.4 million — were in restaurants and bars, many of which probably received assistance under the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. Friday’s report suggests that the program, along with other elements of the government’s response, helped offset at least some of the economic damage.
Consider the economic pain that the unemployment rate leaves out.
The 13.3 percent unemployment rate doesn’t tell the whole unemployment story. That is true even in ordinary times, and more so in view of the pandemic’s effect on the labor market, which has made this figure particularly incomplete as a measure of economic hardship.
The headline unemployment rate is calculated by taking the number of unemployed adults divided by the total number of people in the labor force, employed and unemployed.
