The Labor Department announced today that hiring decelerated to its slowest pace in more than five years in May. Nonfarm payrolls rose by only a seasonally adjusted 38,000 in May. This was its weakest performance since September 2010. Their revisions also showed employers added a combined 59,000 fewer jobs in April and March than previously reported.
Statistics Lie: Unemployment Rate Fell Despite Weak Jobs Growth!
The positive signs showed: 1) the 68th straight month of jobs creation and 2) the unemployment rate falling .3% to 4.7% in May.
Unfortunately, if you look more closely at the statistics, you will find that fewer people were looking for work. Additionally, there are several conflicting surveys that contributed to making the jobs numbers a bit more appealing.
Many economists we surveyed had predicted payrolls would rise by 158,000 and the unemployment rate would hold steady.
May’s weak job growth and the revisions bring the average monthly job gains in the past three months to 116,000, a sharp decline from the average 219,000 growth over the past 12 months.
“This was an unqualified dud of a jobs report,” said Curt Long, chief economist at the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, noting “the unemployment rate fell, but for the wrong reason as labor force participation declined for the second consecutive month.” The share of Americans participating in the labor force fell to 62.6% in May, down 0.2 percentage points from April.
Jobs growth in May was concentrated in the private sector, which added 25,000 jobs, while government payrolls grew by 13,000. Jobs in the telecommunications industry were down 37,200 from April partly due to a Verizon Communications Inc. strike during the survey period.
But payrolls were weak even without the Verizon impact, with weak jobs declining in manufacturing, transportation and temporary-help services. The mining industry continued to suffer the effects of low energy prices loosing 10,200 jobs. This marked its 17th straight month of jobs decline! Moreover, both the Information sector and Manufacturing fell by 34,000 and 18,000 jobs respectively.
Finally, “real” unemployment stayed steady at 9.7%. This figure combines unemployed, underemployed (those involuntarily working part time jobs when they want to find a full time job) and those potential workers who have just given up looking for work.
Two Bright Spots: Wage Growth And Technical Recruiting
One bright spot of the Labor Department report was wage growth. Average hourly earnings of private-sector workers rose by 5 cents or 0.2% to $25.59. From a year earlier, hourly wages have risen by 2.5%, higher than the 2.1% average during the roughly seven-year expansion.
Furthermore, even though technical recruiting has slowed a bit in the past 30 days, our technical recruiters, engineering recruiters and R&D, scientific, engineering, IT and technical recruitment professionals we have polled at other staffing firms have reported that technical recruiting has remained strong.
For example, technical recruitment teams still find a dearth of excellent Electrical Construction Project Managers. These candidates have a B.S.E.E degree with strengths in bidding and managing new electrical projects. These positions pay $90,000 to $130,000 depending upon experience.
The Need To Improve Your Job Hunting Skills
Because job hunting has recently become more difficult, I recommend having your resume up to date. My mantra to that effective is, “Always have your resume updated and ready to go!”
Though there are better ways to generate interviews, having a resume is a necessary tool. Especially, in these tough economic times when you never know when your next layoff will occur!
Although there is no ideal way to prepare a resume, I recommend including a lot of numbers. For example, “I saved my past employer $50,000 with a new machine tool I implemented. (Key: also include as many similar quantitative accomplishments as possible in your resume. This will impress employers).
Also, as a rule of thumb, you want to update your resume every six months. If you job has not changed in that time, then maybe it is a sign that it’s time for a change. So remember, to always have your resume updated and ready to go!
Please go to https://strategicsearch.com/interview-preparation-tips/interview-preparation-tips.php and click on #1 below for my video on this important recruiting tip.
