No, the Unemployment Rate Didn’t Really Drop in May

he Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) surprised the markets and most economists Friday with an announcement that the unemployment rate fell from 14.7 percent in April to 13.3 percent in May. President Donald Trump had the temerity to boast that George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, was “looking down from heaven” to admire those numbers. “This is a great day for him,” Trump said in the Rose Garden. “This is a great day for everybody.”

Beyond the president’s remarkable and offensive invocation of Floyd, there is good reason to be skeptical of his administration’s latest report.

BLS asserts that 20,935,000 Americans were unemployed in May, attributing the decline to employers adding 2,509,000 jobs in May as states allowed “a limited resumption of economic activity.” But it’s not that simple. The unexpected decline in the jobless rate is based on a survey of businesses and households conducted over the week of May 16th, and BLS has also reported that 29,965,415 Americans received unemployment insurance benefits in the same week.  That’s a gap of 8,980,415 people, enough to raise the May jobless rate 5.7 percentage points to 19.0 percent and much closer to economists’ expectations.

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