U.S. Employment Numbers for May: Local and State Governments Cut 39,000 Jobs; Private Sector Produced Just 57,000 Jobs

Economy Added Almost No Jobs Last Month

July 8, 2011

The Lookout - The economy added so few jobs last month that the government calls the employment situation "essentially unchanged" from May. The news comes as a shock, after recent positive signs had led economists to predict a solid rise, and starkly underlines the trend set in other recent economic numbers: The recovery is struggling for any traction at all.

Payrolls increased by just 18,000 in June, the Labor Department said in its monthly jobs report, released this morning. That's even fewer than May's anemic total, which in today's report was revised from 54,000 down to 25,000.

Economists had expected that June would see a modest bounce back, with most forecasting yesterday that the report would show a gain of between 90,000 and 125,000 jobs.

The overall unemployment figure ticked up slightly to 9.2 percent, from 9.1 percent. There are now 14.1 million Americans officially counted as unemployed. Millions more are out of work but don't show up in the numbers, after they'd grown discouraged and stopped looking for a job.

As in May, the loss of government jobs was the key factor in the anemic performance. The number of public-sector jobs declined by 39,000, amid cuts by local and state governments. And the private-sector produced just 57,000 jobs. A survey of private employers released yesterday had found 157,000 new private-sector jobs, raising optimism that today's numbers would be far higher.

The 55-year-old Intern: A Tale of the Downturn

June 30, 2011

The Lookout - Elizabeth Romanaux spent the spring compiling contact lists and doing other administrative tasks at the PR firm where she works, and sometimes fetching lunch.

Nothing unusual about that--she's an intern. But here's what's surprising: she's 55.

After losing her job as a media relations manager, Romanaux took the unpaid gig with a PR firm in New Jersey in order to keep her skills up and make connections, with the hope that in the long run it would lead her back to gainful employment.

"You have to suck it up sometimes and do what a 17-year-old would happily do and be happy about it," she told Reuters.

She's not alone. Experts say the number of mid-career interns has shot up since the downturn began.

"There has definitely been almost an explosion of this kind of thing," said Liz Ryan, a career counselor.

Ryan said before 2008, she'd never been asked by someone mid-career for help getting an internship. But that year, she fielded 20 such questions, and since then she's received around 35 or so annually.

By most measures, younger workers have borne the brunt of the unemployment crisis. But the problem of long-term joblessness has hit workers in their 50s and 60s especially hard. Some employers are reluctant to hire unemployed workers of that age--something a lot of Yahoo readers told us about in response to our recent request for personal experiences of long-term unemployment. (We'll have more on that pretty soon.) As a result, many ultimately give up looking and hold on until retirement.

Or, like Romanaux, they take unpaid work.