U.S. Jobs Report for May: Live Updates
The recession keeps being postponed.
For more than a year, economists have warned that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of aggressive interest-rate increases is likely to cause a sharp drop in consumer demand and an increase in unemployment. Yet consumer spending keeps setting records, and unemployment remains near a five-decade low.
Forecasters expect Friday’s jobs report for May to reveal another month of solid — albeit gradually slowing — employment growth. Even if they are wrong and hiring fell more than expected, the bigger picture is unlikely to change: The U.S. recovery is no longer charging ahead at the blistering pace set when the country first began to emerge from pandemic lockdowns. But the economy is continuing to grow.
U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced, grew roughly 1 percent last year, adjusted for inflation, and at a similar pace in the first quarter of this year. Data from early in the second quarter point to continued growth: Consumer spending and industrial output increased in April.
Economic conditions can change quickly. Many forecasters still expect a recession to begin by the end of the year. And there are hints of economic trouble beneath the surface: More Americans are falling behind on car loans and credit card payments, for example, and a series of high-profile bank failures this year showed how higher interest rates are straining some financial institutions.
But there are also reasons for optimism. The resolution of the debt-ceiling standoff has removed one potential threat, and there have been few signs that the banking crisis has spread more broadly.
“The case of avoiding a recession is, in my view, more likely than that of having a recession,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said in a news conference last month. He added, “It’s possible that we will have what I hope would be a mild recession.”
Source: The New York Times
