Reports suggest a slower job market
Just in time for a new wave of college grads entering the workforce: The pace of hiring is slowing and planned job reductions are increasing.
The reports, from the payroll processing firm ADP and the placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, paint an increasingly bleak picture of the job market. But we’ll know a better data point Friday when the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics releases May employment data.
There were 133,000 jobs added in May by private companies but it was below the economists’ consensus as well as below the 200,000-a-month average of the first quarter.
According to the Pittsburgh Business Times:
“While May’s increase was the twenty-eighth consecutive monthly advance, it nonetheless reflected a notable slowdown in the recent pace of hiring,” said Macroeconomic Advisers LLC Chairman Joel Prakken in a prepared statement. “The sharpness of the deceleration seems consistent with other incoming data suggesting the economy, weighed down by heightened uncertainty over the European financial crisis and by growing concerns about domestic fiscal policy, slowed early in the year.”
The ADP report followed another downbeat assessment of employment from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Employers announced in May that they would cut 61,887 jobs, the most since September 2011 and 67 percent higher than May 2011.
According to the Pittsburgh Business Times:
The No. 1 reason cited by companies was restructuring, accounting for 35,787 planned layoffs in May and 96,399 so far this year. Closing was the second most-cited reason: 11,214 in May and 51,957 year-to-date.
