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Investing June 4, 2004
Economy Watchers Glowing After Plentiful May Job Creation
June 4, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Domestic employment
market watchers got lots to smile about Friday when the
government announced that the job creation machine was in
high gear in May with 248,000 new non-farm
positions.
Reported by Fred Schneyer
The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) said May’s healthy total followed an upwardly revised total of 346,000 jobs added in April and 353,000 in March. By tacking on a whopping 947,000 new jobs in the March to May period, those three months became the strongest job-creation quarter in four years.
The government also said the unemployment rate remained at 5.6% in May, unchanged from April.
Virtually every major sector of the economy added jobs in May, from retailing to construction industries. Particularly notable were 32,000 new hires in the important manufacturing sector – a fourth straight monthly increase and the biggest for any month since August 1998 when 143,000 manufacturing jobs were created, the department said.