Census Hiring Boosts Jobs in May

The U.S. economy tacked on 431,000 new jobs in May, the biggest monthly jump in a decade, but most of those were people hired for the 2010 census count, and those jobs will vanish after the summer.

Private-sector job growth remained weak, making things tough for the 15 million Americans still looking for work. —JCL

The New York Times:

Employers added 431,000 nonfarm jobs nationwide in May, the biggest increase in a single month in a decade, the Labor Department said Friday. But the bulk of the growth was in government jobs, driven by hiring for the 2010 census, and private-sector job growth was weak.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent nationwide, from 9.9 percent in April, the department said.

The figures for May represented the fifth consecutive month that payrolls have risen, but fell below analysts’ expectations that 540,000 jobs would be added to the economy. The shortfall sent stocks down sharply on Wall Street. Most of the private-sector gains were in manufacturing, but over all, the figures suggest that nongovernment hiring was weak.

Altogether, 411,000 of the jobs added were for census workers whose positions will disappear after the summer.

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Flickr / brmurray

May’s bump in job creation was mostly due to the hiring of more than 400,000 temporary census workers.