U.S. employers added a robust 280,000 jobs in May, showing that the economy has regained momentum after starting 2015 in a deep slump. Nonetheless, the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.5% from 5.4% in April, the government announced this morning.
The Associated Press reports the increase occurred for a good reason: Hundreds of thousands more people began seeking jobs in May. Not all of them found work and so were counted as unemployed.
Last month’s strong job growth suggests that employers remained confident enough to keep hiring even after the economy shrank during the first three months of the year. The government also revised upward its estimate of job growth during March and April by a combined net 32,000.
Construction, health care and hospitality companies drove the May job growth. On the negative side, persistently cheaper oil led energy companies to shed workers for a fifth straight month.
Average hourly wages rose 2.3% from a year earlier, showing some pick-up. Even so, pay is barely rising above inflation, a persistent trend that has limited the economy’s growth. Over the past three months, employers have added an average of 207,000 jobs. That’s a decent gain, though lower than last year’s average of 263,667.
Americans bought 1.64 million vehicles in May, the most since July 2005. Manufacturers added 7,000 jobs last month, primarily in the auto sector. Retailers added 31,400 employees, health care companies 57,700. The leisure and hospitality industry, which includes restaurants, added 57,000. The mining sector, which includes oil and gas, trimmed 17,200 workers from their payrolls last month.
As reported earlier this week, the Baton Rouge metro area added 1,000 nonfarm jobs in April compared to levels of March, but the nine-parish region’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.5%. Last year in April, the local unemployment rate was 4.7%. Louisiana’s unemployment rate, meanwhile, declined by 0.1 percentage points over the month to 6.3% in April.
