U.S. Hiring Slows in May - 54,000 Jobs Added / Unemployment Rate 9.1%

Submitted by ub on

After several months of strong job growth, hiring slowed sharply in May, raising concerns once again about the underlying strength of the economic recovery, according to figures release by the US Department of Labor.

US added 54,000 non-farm payroll jobs last month, following an increase of 232,000 jobs in April. The unemployment rate has now increased to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent the previous month.

The pace of job growth has been too slow to reverse much of the damage wrought by the Great Recession, leaving 13 million unemployed workers behind.

For the last few months economists had been predicting that the economy was finally gathering steam and that a sharper bounce-back was imminent, only to be disappointed again and again.