Latino Unemployment Rises To 9.1% In May, U.S. Employers Add 175K Jobs

Unemployment Rate Up To 7.6%

The U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in May. The unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent from 7.5 percent in April, the Labor Department said.

WASHINGTON – The Latino unemployment rate rose slightly to 9.1 percent while the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in May, a gain that shows employers are hiring at a still modest but steady pace despite government spending cuts and higher taxes.

The Latino unemployment rose to 9.1 percent from 9.0 percent in April, the Labor Department said Friday in its monthly report, and the general U.S. unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent from 7.5 percent in April.

The rate rose because more people began looking for work, a healthy sign, the government said. About three-quarters of those looking found jobs. The Latino unemployment rate in May 2012 was 11 percent.

"It is better than expected, but in the grand scheme of things, none of us really like the number, it's extraordinarily mediocre then what we've gotten in the past" Charles Payne, Fox Business Network analyst said on Friday. "For us to be well under 200,000 jobs is really disheartening, but the good news is a lot of people thought it could have been worse."

There are still about 2.3 million Latinos unemployed, according to the Department of Labor monthly report released Friday, but an increase in the Latino Labor Force Participation Rate Percentage rate in May shows signs of a growing workforce.

May's labor participation rate increased to 66.5 percent from 65.6 percent, meaning a little over 336,000 Latinos returned to the workforce in May.

The government revised the job figures for the previous two months. April's gain was lowered to 149,000 from 165,000. March's was increased slightly to 142,000 from 138,000. The net loss was 12,000 jobs.

Stocks rose when the market opened at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, an hour after the report was released. The Dow Jones industrial average was up about 82 points 10 minutes after stock trading began.

"Today's report has to be encouraging for growth in the second half of the year," said Dan Greenhaus, an analyst at BTIG LLC.

Employers have added an average of 155,000 jobs the past three months. But the May gain almost exactly matched the average increase of the past 12 months: 172,000.

Analysts said the less-than-robust job growth would likely lead the Federal Reserve to maintain the pace of its monthly bond purchases. The Fed has said it will keep buying bonds at the same rate until the job market improves substantially. The bond purchases have helped drive down interest rates and boost stock prices.

Stock markets have gyrated in the past two weeks on speculation that the Fed will start to taper its $85 billion-a-month in bond buying — a step that could raise rates and cause stock prices to fall.

"I think the Fed will stay on hold," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. "They want to see numbers above 200,000 on payroll jobs on a consistent basis before they start to taper off."

Behravesh said he thinks the Fed will maintain its pace of bond buying through this year before scaling it back in 2014.

"Today's report is perhaps the perfect number for nervous investors," said James Marple, Senior Economist at TD Economics. "It is strong enough to point to continued economic recovery but not so strong as to bring forward expectations of Fed tapering."

Some signs in the report suggested that the spending cuts and weaker global growth are weighing on the job market. Manufacturers cut 8,000 jobs, and the federal government shed 14,000. Both were the third straight month of cuts for those industries.

Average hourly wages ticked up just a penny in May, to $23.89. That was because much of the job growth was in lower-paying industries.

But mild inflation is boosting American's purchasing power. Over the past 12 months, hourly wages have risen 2 percent. Inflation has increased just 1.1 percent in that time.

The economy grew at a solid annual rate of 2.4 percent in the first three months of the year. Consumer spending rose at the fastest pace in more than two years. But economists worry that the steep government spending cuts and higher Social Security taxes might be slowing growth in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of 2 percent or less.

Consumers appeared earlier this year to shrug off the tax increase. But in April, their income failed to grow, and they cut back on spending for the first time in nearly a year. A Social Security tax increase is costing a typical household that earns $50,000 about $1,000 this year. For a household with two high-earners, it's costing up to $4,500.

Cuts in defense spending might have slowed factory output in some areas, according to a Fed report released this week. Factory activity shrank in May for the first time since November, and manufacturers barely added jobs, according to a survey by the Institute for Supply Management.

A separate ISM survey found that service companies grew at a faster pace last month but added few jobs. Service firms have been the main source of job growth in recent months.

Some positive signs of the economy's resilience have emerged. Service companies reported an increase in new orders, the ISM found. That suggests that businesses could expand further in coming months.

And steady gains in home sales and construction are providing support for the economy even as manufacturing weakens.

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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