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U.S. Added 138,000 Jobs in May, Unemployment Falls to 4.3 Percent

Job creation fell in May, but unemployment also fell to 4.3 percent, the lowest since 2001.
Image: People stand in line to apply for a job during a job fair in Miami
People stand in line to apply for a job during a job fair in Miami.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
By Jeff Cox, CNBC

Job creation fell sharply in May with just 138,000 new positions created, while the unemployment rate declined to 4.3 percent, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Economists surveyed by Reuters expected nonfarm payrolls to grow by 185,000 and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.4 percent.

Wage growth also disappointed, with average hourly earnings rising at a 2.5 percent annualized pace.

In addition to the weak May numbers, previous months also saw significant downward revisions. March's weak 79,000 got sliced down to 50,000, while the April number declined to 174,000 from 211,000. Taken together, job growth has averaged just 121,000 over the past three months.

The report comes amid hopes that the U.S. economy will accelerate after an anemic first quarter that saw GDP increase just 1.2 percent. President Donald Trump has promised his pro-growth agenda will ignite an economy that has shown steady but slow growth since the end of the Great Recession.

Federal Reserve policymakers are watching the jobs data closely, particularly for wage increases. The central bank is expected to continue on a path of periodic rate increases, but slowness in inflation could alter its plans.

Jeff Cox, CNBC

Jeff Cox is a finance editor with CNBC.com where he covers all aspects of the markets and monitors coverage of the financial markets and Wall Street. His stories are routinely among the most-read items on the site each day as he interviews some of the smartest and most well-respected analysts and advisors in the financial world.

Over the course of a journalism career that began in 1987, Cox has covered everything from the collapse of the financial system to presidential politics to local government battles in his native Pennsylvania.