U.S. Employment Gains Much Stronger than Expected in May

The U.S. continued to create solid employment gains for the third straight month, blowing past consensus estimates with 172,000 nonfarm jobs added in May. Boosting the momentum, March’s gain was increased by 29,000 to 214,000 jobs and April’s strong gain was increased by 64,000 to 179,000 jobs, a combined increase over the past two months of 93,000 additional jobs. This month only three of the 11 major sectors recorded losses as the Leisure/Hospitality sector continued to lead the economy for job gains with 70,000 new jobs in May. The food services and drinking places subsector accounted for 48,000 of those jobs. Local government gains brought the Government sector to a 52,000 job gain for the month, while the third largest contributor to May’s increase was the Education/Health Services’ 40,000 jobs – spread throughout the sector’s many subsectors. Other notable changes include a turnaround for Manufacturing from a loss in April to a 7,000-job gain in May (primarily transportation equipment and metal fabrication) and the Trade/Transportation/Utilities sector also flipped but from a solid gain last month to a loss of 3,000 jobs in May. Losses continue in the Financial Services and Information sectors. Meanwhile, the U3 seasonally adjusted headline unemployment rate (from the survey of households) registered at 4.3% in May, hovering close to this level since January despite recent gains.

This post is part of a series analyzing employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more on this data, read previous posts on Job Growth.