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.
2

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. 
3

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.