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467,000 jobs lost in May

July 2nd, 2009
By Anthony Balderrama in Featured, How to search, News and trends, The right job, Who's hiring
2 Comments

The job loss numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning show that 467,000 jobs were lost in May. That is up from the revised total of 322,000 jobs lost in April. Of course that’s not welcome news. However, we’re not at the painfully astronomic levels of a few months ago, when we were in the 600,000 range.

So what should you make of it?

Well, it’s a mixed bag. We’re not out of the woods yet. When you realize that a couple of years ago we were creating hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, we still have a long way to go. But we were keeping the numbers significantly lower than they were in November and December. Many analysts agree that we’re trudging along and shouldn’t expect significant job growth in the immediate future, but there’s a chance we’ve bottomed out (or are at least hovering near the lowest point).

The New York Times has a good analysis of the situation.

As the numbers are revised and we can take a more detailed look at industries, we’ll let you know.

About Anthony Balderrama

Anthony Balderrama writes about hiring trends, workplace issues and job search tactics for CareerBuilder.com and its blog The Work Buzz. He was born and raised in Dallas (115° degrees isn’t hot!) before moving to Chicago (-23° isn’t cold!). He studied creative writing, therefore everything he writes is usually cut in half once he realizes he spent 400 words just on the intro. He knows that looking for a job and dealing with co-workers are not always fun activities, and reading about them is even less thrilling. That’s why he’ll take any opportunity he can to mention his favorite TV show or band in an article. Basically Anthony’s doing whatever he can to avoid hate mail.