May jobs report shows lowest unemployment rate since 2001

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DAYTON, OH — The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has issued employment data for the month of May.

“The unemployment rate in May was 4.3 percent,” said BARRYSTAFF president Doug Barry said. “That’s the lowest in 16 years.”

Since January, the unemployment rate has declined by 0.5 percentage point, and the number of unemployed has decreased by 774,000. The new data shows that employment numbers in major industries such as manufacturing changed little from the month before. It did reflect an uptick in overtime — edging up by 0.1 hour to 3.3 hours.

Job gains occurred in healthcare and mining.

“There was hope that job gains would actually be more significant in May,” Barry said. “That’s not what happened. But unemployment is still low. Keep in mind that it was around 10 percent in 2009.”

BarryStaff Inc. is an award-winning employment agency that hires workers for more than 100 employers throughout the Miami Valley. The majority of them are in manufacturing.