The Most Important Number of the Week Is 559,000
What may appear on the surface to be a disappointing jobs report is actually encouraging news on the state of the economic recovery.
Jobs growth fell short of economists’ forecasts for two consecutive months, but there was growth.
Photographer: Bloomberg
When it comes to judging the performance of the economy, it’s not enough to rely on the facts alone. More important is how to interpret the facts. For example, it’s a fact that the U.S. economy added 559,000 jobs in May, falling short of the 675,000 median estimate of economists and missing by an even further margin the so-called whisper number of 800,000.
So, the Commerce Department report can be interpreted as a disappointment, right? Wrong. The right way to think about the data is that it compares very favorably with the average of 193,000 jobs per month that the economy was adding in the five years before the pandemic. In fact, the only time employment growth was better in the pre-Covid era was way back in September 1983, when the economy added 1.12 million jobs.