The May 2013 Jobs Report

Here is the May 2013 employment situation report from the BLS: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Key Highlights:

- The unemployment rate increased slightly to 7.6%. Non-farm employers added 175,000 new jobs.

- The number of unemployed persons remained increased from 11.7 million in April to 11.8 million in May.

- The civilian labor force participation rate increased slightly to 63.4%.

- The "not in labor force" count (those who have no job and have stopped looking for work) decreased modestly from 89,936,000 in April to 89,705,000 in May.

- The number of persons employed for part-time economic reasons (those that are considered part-time involuntary workers) remained flat at 7,900,000.

- Average hourly earnings rose by 1 cent. The 12-month average for hourly earnings have risen at a 2.0% yearly rate.

- March's jobs created numbers were revised from 138,000 to 142,000, while April's jobs created numbers were revised downward from 165,000 to 149,000.

While most of my analysis of previous jobs reports has been lengthy, to me, the best way to sum up May's report is: more of the same. We're puttering along, a lot of people are left out of the job market (though yes, some have came back into it), and many people are taking small, part-time jobs to make ends meet. We need robust, continuous hiring of around 300-350k jobs per month for the next 3 years to bring the unemployment rate down to 6%. We are nowhere close to this, but the media will make reports like this and subsequent similar reports to come out to be great news of a "recovery." Sadly, we really haven't experienced any such thing.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts below.