May Hiring Slower Than Forecast

Confidence in the economic recovery is still low, if the latest employment numbers are anything to go by. Even though the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent, hiring dropped well below projections in May, according to Labor Department data released Friday. Payrolls rose 431,000 last month, but that number was inflated by a surge of 411,000 hires by the government for temporary workers during the 2010 census. Economists had projected a gain of 536,000 jobs, Bloomberg reports, and Wall Street pushed the Dow down 323.31, or 3.15 percent, to close Friday at 9931.97. All this indicates that the economic recovery could yet slow further. “It’s going to be a long haul,” one economist said. “We really aren’t adding many jobs. We’ve lost some momentum in the economy and final sales clearly aren’t enough to generate job growth.”