Increased Government Jobs Don't Count As Increased Employment

Jillian Bandes | June 04, 2010 9:07 AM

Employment increased by 431,000 jobs in May, but 411,000 of those came from the government hiring temporary census workers. What does that mean? Real employment increased by about 41,000 jobs. Peanuts. What's worse is that economists expected the economy to add 500,000 jobs. We fell well short of expectations.

Meanwhile, the employment rate got better — decreasing from 9.9% in April to 9.7% in May. What does that mean? It means people are giving up. Those workers aren't disappearing — they're discouraged, and once you've stopped actually looking for work, the government stops counting you as wanting to be employed. If you don't want to be employed, you're not "unemployed." Combine that with the actual underemployment rate of 16% — people who have a job but want to work more hours — and we've got a serious number of people who can't bring home the bacon.