decisions are made by someone in the west wing of the white house who has never even held a private sector job. if these dealerships are comfortable staying open and the banks in the community can continue to provide the capital, i cannot see a reason why these dealerships should be forced to close. who else is going to sell these little green cars if we do not have the dealerships there to provide the services? i like to thank dr. hall for testifying before the committee and for his team's important work at the bureau of labor statistics. i will yield back the balance of my time. . . burgess. @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a#a@ @ @ @ @

job losses average 643,000 per month during the prior six months. in may, the unemployment rate rose to 9.4%. since the recession began in september 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 6 million, and the unemployment tage points. job losses continue to be widespread in may but the rate of decline moderated in construction and several service-providing industries. large job losses continued in the manufacturing sector with employment declines in nearly all component industries. employment fell sharply in motor vehicles and parts, machinery and fabricated metals. since the start of the recession, manufacturing employment has decreased by 1.8 million accounting for 30% of the job loss during this downturn. construction employment declined by 59,000 in may, half the average of the previous six months.

job losses moderated in the private service providing industries with employment falling by 113,000 in may compared with an average monthly decline of 356,000 in the prior six months. employment was little changed in temporary help, retail trade, leisure and hospitality and the healthcare industry added jobs in may this is about in line with a trend thus as far in 2009. in may, average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers in the private sector were up by 2 cents to $18.54. over the past 12 months average hourly earnings have risen by 3.1%. from april 2008 to april 2009, the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers declined by 1.2%. turning to measures from your survey of households the unemployment rate increased from 8.9 to 9.4% over the month.

the number of unemployed rose by 787,000 to 14.5 million. since the recession began, the jobless rate has increased by 4.5 percentage points and the number of unemployed persons has grown by 7 million. among the unemployed the number who have been out of work 27 weeks or more increased by 268,000 to 3.9 million. these long-term unemployed represent 2.5% of the labor force, the highest proportion since 1983. over the month the employment of population ratio edged down to 59.7% the lowest levels since october, 1984. since the recession began, the employment to population ratio has fallen by 3 percentage points. among the employed the number of persons working part-time would prefer full-time work was little change for the second conservative month. at 9.1 million in may involuntary part-time employment was 4.5 million higher than at

the start of the recession. among those outside the labor force, that is persons neither working nor looking for work, the number of discouraged workers was 792,000 in may up from 400,000 a year earlier. these individuals are not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available to them. in summary, nonforeign employment payroll fell compared with the average monthly decline of 643,000 for the previous six months. while job losses continue to be widespread declines moderated in construction and in a number of service providing industries that that employment rose by 2.9%. my colleagues and i would be glad to answer your questions. >> thank you very much, commissioner hall. commissioner, i think we had a loss of about 652,000 jobs in march. is that right? is that the estimate. >> yes, that's correct.

>> and we had a loss of about 504,000 in april; is that correct? >> yes, that's correct. >> and this month we're talking about 345,000; is that right >> that's correct. >> tell us the significance of that. is that a slowing down of the job losses, the rate of job losses. is that a reasonable statement there? >> yes, it is. we've had a steady moderation in job loss for -- it looks like four straight months now. >> and what does that tell you? i mean, when you -- you know, you're trying to look forward, what does that say? and what do you attribute that to? >> well, this is -- well, this is clearly not an improvement in the job market yet. this is -- this is in moderation in the job loss. so this is -- this is what we hope to see on the way towards eventually job growth. >> now, we've heard a number of

here recently folks the so-called experts say that we are -- it looks like we may be coming out of this recession at the end of the year or some who are not -- don't, you know, look at it a little more conservatively say sometime in next year. now, what do you see? >> it's hard for me to project but i will say this sort of moderation is consistent with -- with an improving job market as far as whether it will hold -- continue to moderate the future, i can't say. >> now, is it possible to identify the effects of the stimulus bill with regard to employment data? i mean, is there any correlation you can make from looking at what you see there? >> it's hard for us to do that. we're rather focused on just sort of getting the numbers correct and we don't tend to try

to look and see where the stimulus spending has occurred. >> i understand. >> and where we're seeing the improvements. >> well, where have the improvements been? >> they have been fairly widespread outside of manufacturing. so we have had a moderation of job loss and very much in the service-providing sector which is interesting because in the prior six months, about half the job loss was in services and now it's maybe a third of the job loss. >> and what -- why is that so significant? i think it's significant because this downturn sort of started in manufacturing and construction. and when things got really -- really severe, the most severe job loss -- and this job loss is still severe, it was very widespread and really included even services. so having services back out is a good sign. it's not a good sign, obviously, for manufacturing but it's a good sign that -- well, it's a

good sign that we're seeing broad moderation. >> now, there have been recent reports with regard to -- i think the "new york times" carried an article just recently saying basically we have a situation where, for example, new york they predict now that they will not get 44% of the employment taxes. in other words, earnings taxes because, i guess, the unemployment rate is down. when you hear figures like that, how does that affect -- how do you see that affecting this job situation? in other words, state governments getting less money possibly and the's another report that says that a number of these state governments are just in almost every area that they had predicted that they would be gaining funds, they're

actually coming up very short. and so what do you see with regard to state government? how does that state and local government, how does it relate to all of this? >> so far even the last six or seven months the employment at state and local level has been pretty flat. >> uh-huh. >> what obviously the concern would be that at some point of the budgets may start -- start to cause state and local governments to decline employment. >> and that would be a major problem? >> it would. >> the other thing that mr. burgess referred to was the foreclosure situation as a matter of fact mr. brady and mr. burgess referred to it. and we've got situations where we're doing these modifications but if people don't have jobs, that's a real problem. do you see that -- that is the loss of housing, does that create a problem with regard to jobs too? >> i'm sure it does. i think it's the same sort of

cycle that you see with consumption or anything else. when you have -- when you have foreclosures, when you have consumer spending down, it creates unemployment and en this the unemployment creates more -- bigger decline and consumer spending so it's a cycle. so it would be the same thing, i think, with foreclosures. >> i see my time has expired, mr. brady, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you were making the point that the job market is not improving. it's continuing to decline at a significant rate. thankfully, not as quickly as in the past months. what does the may decline in payroll say about the current economic conditions? >> although there's been some moderation in the job loss, there's still a significant job loss and still signals a labor

market that's not healthy >> that's what i sense back home in visiting with retailers and manufacturing industry and in the service and in the commercial real estate, we're not seeing -- the government programs to help people with mortgages are failing. i think the hope for homeownership -- homeowners programs was supposed to help 400,000 people keep their homes and help like 200, the incentives for new homeowners to purchase homes again almost no takers. we're hopeful that some of the new redrawn plans might help but i still think underlying as mr. cummings said is a very weak economy that's got some future challenges ahead. there's been a lot of spin in washington these past months about the impact the stimulus and it's almost like we're listening to baghdad bob again from iraq tell us about how the country is winning the war as the u.s. troops are rolling into his city. last january, two top

administration economists argued if we enacted the stimulus which has added, you know -- will add almost a trillion dollars to our debt, that if we did that, we would keep the unemployment rate at or below 8% this year. this level has already been exceeded; correct? >> correct. >> isn't there from an economic view looking at the poster in watching the rising unemployment which trails the economy as we all know but looking at the president's projections of 8%, 8.1% versus the current 9.4%, is that statistically significant in unemployment? >> yes, that's a significant difference. and to reach an 8.1% average for the year we would need to see the unemployment rate drop to well below 8.1% for a good portion of the year to hit that market. it seems difficult. >> yeah, and indeed as we go in the year the more severe -- we'd almost have to be in the 7% or

6% range at some point to be able to meet that need, which again worries me because these projections were used for the budget which means we're hiding a deeper level of debt. the administration, including the vice president's claim that stimulus policies have added 150,000 new jobs to the level of employment, we see this cited almost daily by the administration. can you substantiate that claim? >> no, that would be a very difficult thing for anybody to substantiate. >> and the chairman who's a highly respected chairman of the council economic advisors chairman roemer, also cited that 150,000 job creation figured in a recent testimony before this committee, you're saying you can't verify that the administration's policies have created those 100 -- additional 150,000 jobs? >> no, we're busy just counting jobs. >> great. the administration's tax reduction went into effect in april. the major -- one of the major

parts of the stimulus bill adds about $1.10 a day to the income of individual taxpayers. what evidence is there in this report today that that measure had any positive effect on employment conditions? >> i really wouldn't be able to make a connection between the two in this report. .. the information he is providing you is inaccurate, or that is not a part of what your answering. it i think it is setting out a message that is not what i think you are saying. >> thank you for the chance to clarify. it is not something that we would be able to measure. it does not mean that it is not true. >> that is a big difference. >> i was not providing

information to mr. hall. i was asking about the claims that have been made by the administration. are there reflected in these job numbers? his answer was very clear. no, they are not. he cannot verify them. they're not justifiable. i understand that he should not go beyond his scope of expertise in these areas. i think the timing -- we're seeing some spent on the economy. it is important to go to the facts. >> i do not want to carry this on to much longer, but mr. hall, i just want to make sure we are clear. when these statements are made, if you do not have the information, i would prefer that you say that. you can see what is happening here. i do not want it out that you're saying you're denying the numbers, you just do not have the information. let him clarify. the information. can you clarify -- go ahead and

clarified. i want to make sure we are clear on this. >> we don't have the information because we are collecting the data. we are not trying to look to see where they are a fact from stimulus. >> so you don't have the unemployment data? >> we have the unemployment data. >> so when we ask about the on employment projections of the administration, 8.1%, versus the current rate of 9.4% which he said was significantly significant, your singing you didn't have that data? >> no, we have the data. that is absolutely true, the nine planned for% is different from 8.1%. >> this bin continues. >> thank you. mr. casey. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. i didn't plan to get into this discussion by think it is important when people are losing their jobs in record numbers that we are very clear what this

hearing is about and why george of is in the bureau of labor statistics so let me just your job, correct me if i'm wrong, but your job is not to make job projections; is that correct? >> that's correct. >> your job is not to do an analysis of the impact of the stimulus legislation; is that correct? >> that's correct. >> your job is not to speculate about the impact of any administration's economic strategy; is that correct? >> that's correct. >> you are joe friday, providing facts every month with the numbers tell you; is that correct? >> that's correct. >> the rest of us can be other than joe friday. we all have different jobs. i want to go through a couple members i tend to ask about every month first fall, there is

some good news here that we see that nationally the job loss number was about -- i guess was march about 700,000, have 699 and wants to make sure we are in the right -- >> it's been revised to 652. >> okay, 652 for march. and then for apr the revised number is 504? >> yes. >> and may is 345. 652 to 504 to 345, the number is going down. it went from 8.5, to 9.4? the overall job loss number going down is good news but the bad news is the rate seems high. can you explain that or analyze that for us? >> i would say that it's not uncommon for the two numbers to not be in exactly in sync, to not tell the same story over a

month. but what typically happens is in the next month or 2i would guess that said they would reconcile, either the growth of the on the employment rate would slow down, or the job loss might pick up. but typically if they get out of sync get back into sync early quickly. >> okay. the numbers i want to ask about, which i ask i think every month, are to do by way of comparison. african-american on the employment rate went the month to month went from 15 to 14.9, so basically unchanged; is that correct? >> that's correct, although it does hide the fact the prior month increased by 1.7 percentage point so i would say it increased significantly last month and that number held this month so it's not really good news. >> but in terms of african-american versus white, the white on employment rate is 8.6?

>> actually we left that out of the numbers. that sounds correct. >> i just want to make that distinction between african-american and white on unemployment. the hispanic rate went 11%, said that is a substantial increase for one month. does that hold any significance necessarily? i know month-to-month can be misleading. >> yeah, on the of breakouts, by demographics some of the numbers move around a bit because it's not a really large sample size. so i look more for the pattern over the last few months, and i think it's still been consistent with rising unemployment rate overall. >> okay. finally, i'm almost out of time, about a minute but in

pennsylvania in march and april were numbers held steady with eight unchanged. we don't know them may number yet. i will know that probably in two weeks so fortunately the last few months have been steady but what i worry about and a lot of states are concerned about is the impact of the troubles at gm and chrysler. and how were state it's not although manufacturing jobs per say, it's really dealers and suppliers. any sense of where that's going? i know that and may i guess the number i'm seeing is 29,800 jobs lost in all the manufacturing in part supply. again i know it is not your job to period bostick eight or predict, but is there any indication that 29,800 number is going to go up? logic would tell it will go up because we won't see the full effect of the gm and chrysler

problems but do you have any on that? >> i can say this month's job loss in the automated is consistent with the last few months. it is pretty much in the same ball park. >> we are losing about 30,000 jobs in the sector. >> yes. >> thank you very much. >> mr. purchase for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just to finish up and close things up from representative brady's line of question the 150,000 job creation figure that kristi romer cited, are those your statistics? >> know they are not. >> so they are from press reports or distribution but they are not bls statistics? so it would be unusual for you to make projections based on that number because that is not your number? >> correct. >> let me ask you a question because we did a lot of conflicting information on this

committee and in general and i know people are confused to the direction of the economy. we hear economists talk and you almost never agree on the direction we are going. we hear testimony in this committee about green chutes and the testimony about yellow weeds, tell us what it is. are we seeing the green chutes or is the landscape still pretty bare? >> i would say overall the job loss was significant. it does seem to be a moderation over the job loss of the previous six months. that, i suppose that's the good news. we still have a deteriorating labor market but it's not -- it's not falling as quickly as it was before. i would say that's the one sign of encouragement here. >> now we have heard a lot this week of course about the

government's takeover of general motors and prior to that the forced bankruptcy of chrysler corporation and now we are hearing about the dealers losing their dealerships in this process. is that going to have an affect on what we see in reports that you're going to bring to this committee over the summer months? >> it may well. typically when we hear announcements of layoffs it usually takes a few months for those to actually occurred and work their way into our data. i don't know specifically where we are in our numbers compared to the announcement. >> i know you can't comment on this but i will just tell you, not as a member of congress, but just as an american it is on usual to me, i find it unusual the government is dictating the foreclosure of automobile to yield to the car dealerships. i find that travel and hope that affect will be moderated over the coming months but i tend to be pessimistic about that. as far as the government itself,

growth of government we hear a lot about that. did government employment increase or decrease over the recent months? >> it was roughly flat. it decreased 7,000 but that is roughly flat. >> and what other -- you mentioned health care i think as an industry sector that should increases. were there any others? >> i think health care was probably the only major sector that had significant job growth. >> again i know you can't speculate but if the government takes over health care of course health care growth will be in the government sector. i just had to point that out. i'm sorry. is their anything unusual in the weather patterns over the last several weeks or a couple months that would have an impact on the report that you've given today? >> i don't recall hearing any stories, our data colctors or

any stories from industry analysts that weather was an impact. >> have there been any seasonal factors that would have an impact on these numbers that we have in front of us today? >> no, i don't -- >> we are coming off of winter you actually probably expect jobs to increase this in school people looking for jobs and the increase, so profound affect room or the other? >> these numbers are seasonally adjusted so what they are is we put them in the context of what is normal for this time of year so there is a seasonal factor. >> accounted for in the numbers? >> wt about employment of are there any significant gender differences divide into five male versus female employment? >> i think the pattern has been consistent through this recession. the job loss by men the preface is three to one, men versus women in job loss.

that is actually typical of recession in fact if anything the women's job loss is a little bit higher than it normally is during recession. >> as far as hourly compensation , what have you seen as far as changes in the hourly compensation? >> well, the real pattern let me talk about nominal first. the nominal compensation wages during the expansion got up to almost four per cent and during this recession now the nominal wage growth has declined roughly around 3.1%, something like that. that is typical of recessions. >> 3.1 is positive or negative? >> positive, this is normal. since energy prices have been going down and are starting to take up the last few months has real wage growth is primarily because the declining energy prices not because of something going on in the labour market.

>> we just passed a big cap-and-trade bill. >> it is difficult because the occupations we have got are not designed to plump green jobs, that is actually something we may be able to do overtime and adjust measurements. to be honest is a similar problem as we have in the late 1990's with i.t. jobs. >> perhaps you can color code your report in the futures mckinsey the dream jobs. >> thank you. >> ms. klobuchar for five minutes. >> thank you. good to see you again, commissioner hall. i think when we were talking last month at this hearing you had went through the statistics and increases and indicated that we would continue to see this on employment and one of the things i want to clarify on congressman braley questions is the fact i think since the start of the

recession we lost something like 7 million people have lost their jobs. when will you marked the start of this recession, this economic crisis? >> obviously the mbr was chosen by the start of the recession that also coincided with the first payroll job loss. so that's been a pretty good indicator for the recession. >> so december 07 was an entire year before president obama took office; is that correct? >> that is correct. >> we are at 9.4% unemployment rate. just we talked about last month these are real people who've lost their jobs. i mentioned to you stories last time and i think we have to remember this when we use these statistics. i heard this from a woman in minnesota who works to provide sometimes not coming home until 3 in the morning. she told