WASHINGTON, DC –(ENEWSPF)–June 1, 2012. Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, issued the following statement today on the employment situation in May. You can view the statement HERE.
The Employment Situation in May
Posted by Alan B. Krueger on June 1, 2012 at 9:34AM EDT
Problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight. The economy lost jobs for 25 straight months beginning in February 2008, and over 8 million jobs were lost as a result of the Great Recession. We are still fighting back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Today we learned that the economy has added private sector jobs for 27 straight months, for a total of 4.3 million payroll jobs over that period. The economy is growing but it is not growing fast enough. BLS’s establishment survey shows that private businesses added 82,000 jobs last month, and overall non-farm payroll employment rose by 69,000. The unemployment rate ticked up from 8.1% in April to 8.2% in May, according to BLS’s household survey. However, the labor force participation rate increased 0.2 percentage point to 63.8%, and employment rose by 422,000 according to the household survey.
