The U.S. Labor
Department said on Friday that nonfarm payrolls rose by 139,000 in May after a
downwardly revised 147,000 increase (from 177,000) in April. This represented the weakest
advance in three months.
According to
the report, employment improved health care (+62,000), leisure and hospitality (+48,000),
and social assistance (+16,000). Meanwhile, federal government (-22,000) lost
jobs.
The
unemployment rate held steady at 4.2 per cent in May.
Economists had expected
the nonfarm payrolls to gain by 130,000 and the jobless rate to be unchanged at 4.2 per cent.
The labour
force participation rate slipped to 62.4 per cent in May from an
unrevised 62.6 per cent in
the previous month, while hourly earnings for private-sector workers climbed 0.4
per cent m-o-m (or $0.15) to $36.24, following an unrevised
0.2 per cent m-o-m rise (from +0.2 per cent m-o-m) in April. This marked the
strongest monthly gain since January
(+0.4 per cent m-o-m). Economists had forecast the average hourly earnings to grow 0.3 per cent m-o-m
in May.
Over the year,
the average hourly earnings surged 3.9 per cent in May, the same pace as in the
previous month (revised from +3.8 per cent in the original estimate). Economists had predicted the annual wages to soar by
3.7 per cent y-o-y in May.