by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:

The 20 industries with biggest job losses & the 20 with the biggest gains. The unemployment rate would have been 16% if people had responded to the survey correctly, said the BLS; that would be 25.3 million unemployed. Abysmal.

The total number of jobs rose by 2.5 million in May from April, to 132.9 million jobs, following the April collapse of 20.7 million jobs and the March plunge of 1.4 million jobs. Over the past three months – the period spanning the collapse of the US labor market – employers reported shedding 19.6 million jobs.

In May, the gain was a composite of diverging trends – job gains in some parts of the private sector and further job losses in other parts of the private sector and steep job losses in government:

• The private sector added 3.1 million jobs, which whittled down total job losses since March to 18.2 million. Over half of those private-sector job gains occurred at restaurants, bars, and retailers (1.74 million combined)


• Governments at all levels shed 585,000 jobs in May, which increased total government job losses over the past three months to 1.57 million. In May, local governments shed 487,000 jobs; state governments shed 84,000 jobs; and the federal government shed 14,000 jobs.


• Hotels, air transportation, management, oil-and-gas extraction, and computer systems design shed a combined 252,900 jobs.

This is based on the surveys of employers (“establishment surveys”), released as part of the jobs report this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reference period on the survey extended through May 12th. Given the issues with the pandemic, the BLS noted that people were counted as “employed” if they were paid by their employer for any part of the pay period through the 12th, “even if they were not actually at their jobs.”

Below is a table of the 20 industries with the biggest job gains in May, topped by restaurants and bars which reopened in some places, construction sites where work resumed, and healthcare services providers as dentists and others resumed treating their patients.

The table is followed by a table of the 20 industries with the biggest job losses in May, topped by governments.

Industries with the biggest job losses. In the table below, note that the job losses at in the accommodation sector and at airlines were proportionately large, with job cuts in May amounting to about 12% of total jobs in April:

In addition to the “establishment” data, based on employer surveys, the BLS reported the results from the surveys sent to 60,000 households to see what the employment situation looks like from their perspective, which picks up the total number of employed, including gig workers, part-time workers, the unemployed, labor force, and the like.

The number of people with jobs, according to the household surveys, rose by 3.8 million people in May, from April, which includes gig workers and part-time workers. This rise came after the 22.4-million plunge in April and the 3.0-million plunge in March. All combined, over the past three months, the number of employed people has plunged by 21.5 million.

This brought the total number of employed people, including gig workers and part-time workers, according to the household surveys, to 137.2 million, the lowest since October 2002. April had been the lowest since July 1999:

The number of unemployed people, according to the household surveys, fell by 2.1 million, after having spiked by 15.9 million in April and by 1.4 million in March. This brought the number of unemployed people to 21.0 million.

The unemployment rate, according the household surveys, fell to 13.3%, the second highest in the history of the data going back to 1948, after the record set in April (14.7%).

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