May Payrolls Miss: 559K Jobs Added, Below Expectations; Unemployment Rate Drops

With so much of the recent labor market discourse focusing on widespread shortages resulting from Uncle Sam’s generous unemployment benefits (15 million people still collecting some form of weekly unemployment benefit), today’s jobs report which is expected to show a substantial rebound from April’s big miss, was set to be defining: another big miss and the shortage narrative would dominate for a long time, a big beat would meanwhile spark renewed reflation worries.

Well, it appears that “shortages” won out in the end because moments ago the BLS reported that in April just 559K jobs were added, which while a big improvement to April’s upward revised 278K, was another big miss compared to the 674K expectations.

Developing