The American economy gained 661,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate declined from 8.4 percent to 7.9 percent. Obviously this performance can’t be judged by our usual standards, but when you put it on a chart it’s obvious that we’re no longer making up very many of the jobs lost in March and April:
Unsurprisingly, earnings were flat. In fact, accounting for inflation, earnings fell about 1 percent. I’ll have more details later in the morning.
