Weekly Wrap: The dismal May jobs report
John Carney from CNBC and Felix Salmon of Reuters wrap up the week with the latest headlines from Wall Street and beyond.
John Carney: This is really bad. I think this is probably the worst imaginable jobs report you could get at this point. The projections were way off; the actual number was way below even the lowest number coming out of the official economists who are always asked to project where the number would be. Even on Twitter — which was enormously bearish this morning — the consensus number was above where we came in.
Felix Salmon: I do [agree]. I know that it’s fun to be contrarian and come up with silver linings — and they can do that. If you look at the household report, which comes up with the unemployment figures, there was actually a little bit of good news in there about a large increase in the number of people looking for jobs, an increase in the labor force — and actually an increase in employment, about 440,000 rather than just the official number of just 69,000. But frankly, this was a really, really bad report. Employers are not adding job, and the government really has to act. But unfortunately in an election year, they’re not going to.
For more analysis, listen to the audio above.
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