WASHINGTON (MNI) - With job gains limited to just four major categories, May payrolls were up only 138,000 and an improvement in the unemployment rate to 4.3% was mainly because of a shrinkage in the labor force.
The report Friday from the Bureau of Labor also showed large downward revisions, with March now showing only 50,000 payroll additions, the least since May of last year. April is now up 174,000 for a total net subtraction of 66,000.
The unemployment rate, at 4.3% (4.294%), matched May of 2001 and was only a tenth higher than February 2001.
BLS chief of labor statistics, Dori Allard, told Market News International that were it not for the outsized shrinkage of the labor force, 429,000 smaller in May, the unemployment rate would have "probably" stayed at 4.4%.
Labor force shrinkage was also reflected in the two-tenths decline in the labor participation rate, to 62.7% for the month.
Allard noted the long list of job categories that did not significantly contribute to payroll gains in the month, including construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation, finance and government.
The plus side was limited to four categories, health care that rose by 24,000, above this year's monthly average of 22,000, mining, professional and business services and restaurants and bars.
The month's private payrolls total was more than 100,000 fewer than estimated Thursday by ADP/Moody's Analytics.
The second report released Friday, the Commerce Department's report on the April trade gap, showed a wider-than-expected goods and services deficit of $47.6 billion compared to the upwardly revised March number of $45.3 billion, despite the first decline in the cost of a barrel of imported oil in seven months.
The deficit in goods alone was $68.4 billion, with exports shrinking 0.4%, less than in the preliminary report, and imports up 0.9%, slightly more than earlier reported for the month.
Both imports and exports of services showed record levels, of $43.3 billion and $64.0 billion respectively.
The April goods deficit outside of oil, at $61.7 billion, was the most since March 2015. Oil imports by volume, 229 million barrels, were the lowest since October.
Another record in the report was the total for exports to South Korea, at $4.4 billion.
The deficit with China in goods, always the largest with any country, was $27.6 billion for the month, wider by 12.4% from March.
The deficit with Germany in goods was $5.5 billion, wider slightly from the March total of $5.3 billion.
The deficit with Japan was $5.2 billion, narrower by 28% from March.
Comparing three-month periods, the latest showed an average overall deficit that was nearly unchanged from the previous three months, just $200 million less.
