Employment Law News

The Employment Situation:  May 2006

Nonfarm employment edged up in May (+75,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  Employment continued to trend up in some service-providing industries and in mining, while retail trade and manufacturing lost jobs.  Average hourly earnings were up by 1 cent in May following a gain of 10 cents in April.
  
Unemployment (Household Survey Data)
  
Both the number of unemployed persons (7.0 million) and the unemployment rate (4.6 percent) were essentially unchanged in May.  A year earlier, the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent.
  
In May, the jobless rates for the major worker groups--adult men (4.2 percent), adult women (4.1 percent), teenagers (14.0 percent), whites (4.1 percent), blacks (8.9 percent), and Hispanics (5.0 percent)--showed little or no change over the month.  The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.0 percent, not seasonally adjusted. 

Total Employment and the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
  
Total employment (144.0 million) continued to trend up in May; over the year it has increased by 2.4 million.  Both the employment-population ratio (63.0 percent) and labor force participation rate (66.1 percent) held steady
over the month.  
  
Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
  
About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in May, the same as a year earlier.  These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.  They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.  Among the marginally attached, there were 323,000 discouraged workers in May, down from 392,000 a year earlier. Discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because
they believed no jobs were available for them.  The other 1.1 million marginally attached had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. 

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	Did You Know?
	About at will employment In certain states, employers do not have the right to terminate employees "at will" if the termination violates public policy, an implied employment contract, or an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.