The Census Shores Up the Employment Rate

May’s unemployment numbers are here!! Thank goodness it’s 2010 (a Census year), or May would have looked much more ugly.

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% via the introduction of 431,000 non-farm jobs. We all knew that census hiring would pump up the the employment stats a bit, but we were expecting it would account for about 80% of the total. Hah! How do you like 95%!! [Check it out ==>]

The labor force shrank again, from 65.2% of the population down to 65%. So the modestly good news from last month is gone. You may remember all the MSM pundits who were saying last month “the unemployment rate went up, but that’s good news because more people came back to the labor market.” I doubt that they’ll be pointing out that this month the unemployment rate went down, but that that’s bad news because more people left the labor market.

As I was noting yesterday, we’re in the doldrums, employment-wise. The sad thing is that we’re in the doldrums even with the addition of over 400,000 Census jobs. The private sector isn’t really going anywhere, despite the scattered signs of small increases in economic activity. Here’s what the doldrums look like, graph-wise:

Of course, the Obama administration has already predicted that there will be no jobs recovery for another year. Somehow they’re OK with that. As is the Democratically-controlled Congress.