Advance copies of this statement are made available to the press 
under lock-up conditions with the explicit understanding that 
the data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.


                            Statement of

                          William W. Beach
                            Commissioner
                     Bureau of Labor Statistics

                        Friday, June 7, 2019


      Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in May (+75,000), and 
the unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent. Employment 
continued to trend up in professional and business services and 
in health care.
      
      Incorporating revisions for March and April, which 
decreased employment by 75,000, monthly job gains have averaged 
151,000 over the past 3 months.
      
      Employment in professional and business services continued 
to trend up in May (+33,000). Over the past 12 months, the 
industry has added 498,000 jobs.
      
      In May, health care employment also continued to trend up 
(+16,000). Health care has added 391,000 jobs over the past 12 
months.
      
      Employment in construction was little changed in May 
(+4,000), following an increase of 30,000 in April. The industry 
has added 215,000 jobs over the last 12 months.
      
      Employment showed little change in May in other major 
industries--including mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, 
retail trade, transportation and warehousing, information, 
financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and government.
      
      Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 
payrolls rose by 6 cents in May to $27.83, following a 6-cent 
gain in April. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings 
have risen by 3.1 percent; the over-the-year percent change has 
been 3.0 percent or above for 10 consecutive months. From April 
2018 to April 2019, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban 
Consumers (CPI-U) increased by 2.0 percent (on a seasonally 
adjusted basis).
      
      Turning to measures from the survey of households, the 
unemployment rate held at 3.6 percent in May. The number of 
unemployed people, at 5.9 million, was little changed.
      
      Among the unemployed, the number of people searching for 
work for 27 weeks or more was 1.3 million, little changed over 
the month. These long-term unemployed accounted for 22.4 percent 
of the unemployed.
      
      Both the labor force participation rate, at 62.8 percent, 
and the employment-population ratio, at 60.6 percent, were 
unchanged over the month.
      
      In May, 4.4 million people were working part time for 
economic reasons (also referred to as involuntary part-time 
workers), down by 299,000 from the previous month and by 565,000 
over the year.
      
      Among those neither working nor looking for work in May, 
1.4 million were considered marginally attached to the labor 
force, little changed from a year earlier. (People who are 
marginally attached to the labor force had not looked for work 
in the 4 weeks prior to the survey but wanted a job, were 
available for work, and had looked for a job within the last 12 
months.) Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally 
attached who believed no jobs were available for them, numbered 
338,000 in May, also little changed from a year earlier.
      
      In summary, nonfarm payroll employment edged up in May 
(+75,000), and the unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent.