As you can see, permanent work didn't do so well. The Census and other temporary jobs led the growth. Meanwhile, construction experienced a larger contraction at 35,000 jobs lost than any gain shown for a single permanent job sector above. This may reflect an adjustment for fewer new homes being built as buying demand declines without the government tax credit.

Discouraged job-seekers declined a bit, but remained above one million. Here's a chart showing the history:

The broadest measure of unemployment, "U-6," improved by a half a percentage point in May, moving to 16.6% from 17.1% in April. This is the percentage of unemployed plus discouraged workers, those marginally attached to the labor force, and those forced to work part time because they can't find full time work.

Unemployment duration stayed on its worrying trend in May. The number of workers unemployed for at least 27 weeks rose by 47,000 Americans to 6,763,000 people. The number of long-term jobless from this recession continues to shatter records.

Seasonality didn't play too big a role in this month's data. The adjusted rate remained above the unadjusted rate:

Expect to see it sink back below in June. That could provide the lowest unemployment rate we've seen in nearly a year, even with little job growth. The unadjusted rate was 9.3% last month.

May's jobs report doesn't provide much good news. Employment grew, but almost entirely due to temporary Census jobs. Meanwhile, the number of discouraged job-seekers remained high and more Americans were unemployed for at least half-a-year. The only glimmer of positive news was that U-6 declined half a point, but some of that is also due to Census jobs. They now total 564,000.

As for our polls, readers didn't do too badly this month. 17.9% correctly guessed that 9.7% would be the rate in May. Meanwhile 23.1% correctly predicted that there would be between 400,001 and 500,000 jobs added to the economy.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all data is seasonally adjusted.

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