Unemployment Rate For May Falls By 0.1% To 4.3%

The Labor Department has released its employment statistics for May. It showed a rather weak growth in jobs -- only 135,000. But the official unemployment rate did fall to 4.3% (0.1% less than April).

Don't pop the cork on the champagne though. The rate didn't fall because of a booming economy creating massive job growth. Far from it. In fact, the number of people employed in the civilian work force actually declined by 233,000 (from 153,156,000 in April to 152,923,000 in May). So, how did the rate fall if fewer people are employed? It's because the size of the civilian work force also shrunk -- by an even larger amount than the number of employed workers did. It fell from 160,213,000 in April to 159,784,00 in May -- a drop of 429,000. It seems that people are still dropping out of the labor force because they're giving up on finding a decent job.

Here are the relevant statistics for May:

SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE

159,784,000

NUMBER OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYED WORKERS

6,861,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

4.3%

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT

Adult men..............3.8%
Adult women...............4.0%
Teens (16-19)...............14.3%
Whites...............3.7%
Blacks...............7.5%
Hispanics...............5.2%
Asians...............3.6%
Less than HS diploma...............6.1%
HS graduate...............4.7%
Some college...............4.0%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.3%

MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS (official + marginally-attached)

8,336,000

MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

5.22%