Solid job market numbers for May 2025 hide weaknesses
San José, CA – On Friday, June 6, the Department of Labor released its monthly report on the jobs markets. While the headline numbers were solid, weaknesses are hidden in the report.
Wall Street, better known for a crowd mentality than deep analysis, responded positively, with major stock market price indices all up about 1%, while bond prices fell and interest rates rose as Federal Reserve interest rates cuts seemed less likely.
According to the report, there were 139,000 net new jobs created in May. This was less than 175,000 new jobs in April, but more than most economists expected. However, job creation reports in April and March were revised downward by 95,000, offsetting most of the gains in May.
Similarly, the official unemployment rate held steady at 4.2% in May, the same as April. But this was only true because more than 600,000 workers without jobs stopped looking, or in economic terms “dropped out of the labor force” and were no longer counted as unemployed. This survey of households showed 700,000 fewer people with jobs.
Other signs of weakness was the drop in federal government employment. While there were only 22,000 net job losses, this was the fourth month in a row of losses. Further, there are many more federal jobs that have already been cut, but the workers who are on severance leave or fighting their layoffs haven’t been counted yet.
There was also a drop in manufacturing jobs in May. While the number was small, manufacturing is typically one of the first sectors to lose jobs when the economy is heading into a recession. Temporary help, which also sheds jobs leading into a typical recession, lost a significant number of jobs, at 20,000. Last of all, the diffusion rate, that is the number of industries gaining jobs vs. those losing jobs, was split, with one half of the industries gaining jobs and half losing. Manufacturing industries were much more negative, with barely 41.7% of manufacturing industries gaining jobs, that is, 58.3% were losing jobs.