The unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent in May, a new low for the recovery and the lowest level since 2001. However, this decline in unemployment was the result of people leaving the labor market; as the number reported as employed in the household survey actually fell, with the overall employment-to-population ratio dropping from 60.2 percent in April to 60.0 percent in May.
The establishment survey showed further evidence of a weakening labor market as the pace of job growth slowed to 138,000 in May. There were also substantial downward revisions to the prior two months’ job growth numbers, which brought the average for the last three months to just 121,000.
In addition, wage growth appears to be moderating rather than accelerating. The year-over-year increase in the average hourly wage is just 2.4 percent. Taking the average of the last three months compared with the average of the prior three months, wages are rising at just a 2.2 percent annual rate.
There is certainly little evidence in this report that the labor market is overheating or is likely to do so any time in the foreseeable future.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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