On the first Friday of each month the Labor Department releases the employment report for the prior month. In the White House we used to call it Jobs Day, and it’s a fairly big deal when the economy is in transition.
Today is Jobs Day. Here are the two most important facts from the May employment report:
- The U.S. economy lost a net 345,000 jobs in May. This bad news beat expectations, so markets reacted positively.
- The unemployment rate jumped from 8.9% to 9.4%, the highest since August 1983.
In an effort to build traffic, I am going to start posting occasionally on other blogs and websites. So you can read today’s post on the Jobs Day report on National Review Online’s The Corner. I hope you don’t mind the extra click.