Doug Mataconis · · No comments

The unemployment report for May, released this morning, reflects the fact that the economy is still a long way from the kind of recovery that will actually put people back to work:

Employers added 431,000 nonfarm jobs nationwide in May, the biggest increase in a single month since the recession, the Labor Department said Friday. But the bulk of the growth was in government jobs, driven by hiring for the Census, and private-sector job growth was weak.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent nationwide, from 9.9 percent in April, the department said.

The figures for May represented the fifth consecutive month that payrolls have risen, but fell below analysts’ expectations that 540,000 jobs would be added to the economy.

The shortfall was immediately reflected in futures trading in the Wall Street stock indexes, with the Dow Jones industrial average expected to open almost 2 percent lower.

Altogether, 411,000 of the jobs added were for Census workers whose positions will disappear after the summer.

The net gain in government jobs was 390,000, while the private sector added only 41,000.

In April, nonfarm payroll employment grew by 290,000, but the unemployment rate rose nevertheless to 9.9 percent because of a surge in the labor force.

The economy has to add more than 100,000 jobs every month to absorb the new entrants to the market. And they are joining a labor pool that is already swollen with 15 million Americans looking for work.

More than eight million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession in December 2007.