On Friday, the May job reports were released at a time when Americans are unsure of where the economy is headed. According to a poll by Gallup, 49% believe the economy is coming back compared with the 45% who see it getting worse.
The report may have confirmed some people’s worries as the unemployment rate went up a tick to 7.6%. But the economy did add 175,000 jobs, showing steady growth. We are currently going at "a pace that is clearly demonstrably not fast enough to bring down the unemployment rate,” economist Jared Bernstein said on Friday's The Cycle. "We had over 400,000 people enter the labor market last month and not enough chairs for them to sit in, not enough job slots...So it’s that kind of supply/demand that’s not matching up well enough to bring the unemployment rate down as quickly as we need it to.”
However, some areas have improved. “If you look at restaurants, if you look at leisure kind of the hospitality side of employment they have been adding employment,” Bernstein said. Americans have been hit hard in the manufacturing sector and at the federal government level. "The federal government has lost 45,000 jobs over the past three months and you can pretty much draw a line in that graph where sequestration begins," Berstein said.