The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report today on employment and unemployment for May (available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf).



Highlights of the report:

· Non-farm payroll employment increased by 157,000 new jobs in May, following increases of 80,000 in April and 175,000 in March.

o May marks the 45th consecutive month with payroll job gains.

- Over 8 million new payroll jobs have been created in that period.

- Over the year ending in May, payroll employment grew by more than 1.9 million.

o Since the enactment of tax relief in 2003 (i.e., from June 2003 through May 2007), monthly payroll job gains have averaged a healthy 178,000. In contrast, average monthly payroll job losses between the beginning of 2001 and enactment of pro-growth tax relief were -83,000.



· The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.5% in May.

o The unemployment rate has ranged from 4.4% to 4.6% since last September.

o The unemployment rate remains well below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003.





Rachel Greszler

Economist, Senate Republicans

Joint Economic Committee

(202) 224-2944

Rachel_Greszler@jec.senate.gov