every sector has seen some job loss. it is hard to say, at least right now, where there is likely to be growth. >> when i listen to your testimony, and i do not want us to have on rose colored -- have on rosy glasses because i was to be realistic. people are trying to take care of their families. when i see numbers where we were losing 600,000 jobs in april, and 500 something in the last few months. then, we go to 345. that seems to have some kind of significance. any time we're cutting something in half, to me, that sounds significant. the see it that way? . . significant. do you see it that way? >> yes, i do. it is encouraging the job loss

has moderated. and while this is not good news this is what we would hope to see on the way to good news. in other words this is a labor market that isn't falling as fast as it was before. >> one of the things i believe is very important in all of this recovery that we are trying to exercise here is that there must be some kind of consumer confidence. is there a connection between the overall consumer confidence and level of direction of on employment rates? >> i would say yes especially when you have large changes in consumer confidence. and by far the most important thing in the economy is consumer spending. it's 7% of the economy. a good portion of the rest of the economy depends upon upon consumer spending so it is significant if consumer confidence starts to fall or if it is rising from levels we have seen lately. that is potentially a significant thing for the future.

>> so let's do some addition here. we have got a reduction in their rate of lost jobs, and of course here recently we had in consumer confidence. you were aware of that? >> yes. >> can we expect this good news to shop and unemployment numbers the next few months? is that a reasonable expectation or is there a history of that kind of thing happening? because again, we want to give the american people inaccurate, don't want to be too rosy i just wanted to be accurate, as best we can be that we of course. >> if consumer confidence leads to stronger consumer spending that will lead to an improvement in the labour market. >> are the effects on consumer confidence confined to households that directly experience job loss? >> no, it's not.

it is -- there is a cycle when you start a recession where consumer spending goes down, they start to have job loss and the job loss means further reduction in consumer spending so there's a cycle downward. there's also a cycle that can occur upwards of consumer confidence and spending increases that slows the job loss and maybe gets the job gain and that means higher consumer spending so you have the cycle working backwards. >> so to summarize what you just said it sounds like we are moving in the right direction maybe not as fast as we would like to but at least we are moving in the right direction. >> yes. >> and how high would -- we've got the slowdown in job loss but we've got an increase in on a planet. at what point do we -- what you think we would begin to see the

unemployment comedown in relationship to the job loss? what kind of numbers which you need to see for that to be the case? >> the way i think about it is we need to see ye not job growth to match the growth in the labour force, growth in the populations so if we get the job growth of like 125,000 a month that is consistent with a constant on employment rate. so we need somewhere above that see the unemployment rate go down. >> my time is expired. mr. brady. >> thank you mr. chairman. you noted a moment ago states with the highest unemployment rate, which brings to mind a report, a review of the stimulus spending down by usa today recently where it said basically that the states hit the hardest by the recession has received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even

though the new federal spending was meant to target places with economic pain has been particularly severe or view of the nearly $4 billion of contracts that have been awarded by the massive stimulus package according to this report. in review, the government has only spent about $7.42 per person in states with high unemployment. the economy is worse there. north dakota with the lowest unemployment rate has received about $26 per person, so apparently those contracts are not going to the states that need it the most. that is consistent with the review by the associated press that points out recently that states are planning to spend 50% more per person in areas with low unemployment than areas with highest unemployment, to quote the ap the trend in the analysis runs counter to expectations raised by the president that road infrastructure money from

the historic $787 billion stimulus plan with trade jobs in the areas most devastated by layoffs. does your analysis show high on employment states, the ones that are struggling most, that there has been an impact from these stimulus dollars? is their anything, again, going back to your numbers is their anything here that confirms or denies this type of analysis? >> we wouldn't be able to tell. >> the reason i ask and i do think it's important to go to the numbers is people back home really are struggling. texas has a better economy than most but we are feeling it as well and if you talk to the retailers the arnold seeing increase in spending. there are activity and the infrastructure dollars which we should have done far greater investment than we did in squandering some of the money and stimulus.

our folks back home just want to know the truth. you know, they hear the president's director of the budget peter orszag tells cnn the effects of the stimulus would be felt in weeks to months. larry summers, director of national economic council told cnn wolf platts search you'll see the effects begin almost immediately. christine romer along with vice president claiming 150,000 jobs have already been created said we will turn the corner and start adding jobs and then we've got a press secretary sitting stimulus has already started to save and create jobs. the stimulus has already started to save and create jobs get when you look at the numbers they don't seem to bear that out. the on unemployment rate being probably the most dramatic comparison of the claims of the administration and the real economy. as you bring reports in the

future is it possible for you to do deeper analysis on the effects of the stimulus or of targeting those states of the higher unemployment rate so that we can see if there is some impact that we ought to be encouraged by, and again, no spin, just facts, how do we get to the facts? >> we just aren't geared up and it's not our mission to do that sort of analysis. to be honest, we are fully adopted by counting the number of jobs month by month to. to put it in perspective we are talking 135 million payroll jobs we are measuring every month, so we just couldn't try to figure out the effects of the stimulus package in that. ..

>> it was roughly flat. it declined by about seven million. for what it's worth, last month we got a bump of about 63,000 -- 7,000. i said seven million. census added 53,000 employees. >> that would be a bump. seven million. >> yes. >> we get a bump last month because of the census. >> and we lost about 18,000 because of census this month. so we took away. and all the decline in government employment was from census. >> the losses, the 21,000 jobs lost from the auto manufacturing, that will be reflected in the future, in the manufacturing sector? >> yes. >> the jobs lost last question, jobs lost from dealerships being closed, reflected -- >> yeah. and under retail trade, we've got auto dealerships. >> ok. great./á@ i'm glad i

voted for it and i believe we're seeing a positive impact from it. can you back up that on every point with numbers? probably not. we're seeing it on the ground. there are projects started. there are jobs being created but it's still kind of early to tell whether or not the recovery bill has had the impact we wanted it to have. we'll know soon enough. there'll be a history written of this time period and one side or the other is going to be mostly right or mostly wrong.

so i think it's a little early but i know there's a debate about that. i wanted to go back to one point in the unemployment rate for minorities but in particular, minority women as opposed to the white female number. the unemployment rate for white females -- do you have that number as compared to african-american women and hispanic women? >> sure. the unemployment rate for white women is 6.9%. >> 6.9? >> for african-american women, it is 11.2%. >> okay. and how about -- is the hispanic female number 10.5, 10.5? >> yes. >> okay.

i mean, we're seeing a gap there between -- similar to the gap on overall white versus african-american versus hispanic. it's reflected as well in the female worker numbers. is there anything that in the data that jumpsut that explains that or is that -- is that typical in terms of the month-to-month or year to year job numbers because it's troubling that we have double-figure numbers for minorities both -- double figure numbers both for minorities generally and in particular for subsets of that as opposed to white male or female workers. but there may not be anything that you can tell us but i'm just curious if there's anything in the numbers that jumps out to explain that or to put that into

context? >> no. in fact, that gap is typical during economic expansions, during recessions. it's just a gap that exists, in fact, during recessions the rise in unemployment for the minority groups typical rises further. so i don't have -- i don't have a ready explanation for it. >> sure. no, thank you very much. >> senator klobuchar? >> thank you very much. one other area we talked about last month, commissioner hall, was vernon employment. it's startling in the country those who come back in the last few years the unemployment rate of veterans since the gulf war is higher than the unemployment rate for people who have not served our country and part of that i believe is because when they leave they have a job and then the -- because they're gone as the unemployment rates going up and jobs are going away, it's harder for them to get a job when they come back.

i know that last month that the unemployment rate for veterans since the gulf war was 10.3% which includes the current wars in afghanistan and iraq. what is that rate now? >> for may the gulf war-era veterans unemployment rates 11.4%. >> uh-huh. so it actually -- did it go up from last month then? >> i think that's -- i think that's correct. i don't have that data right in front of me. that's probably correct but we can check on that if you'd like. >> yeah, could you? i would just like to see how much it's gone up each month because i think it's a big concern that we keep having that happen. chairman cummings asked you about young people and what you say to young people about what the -- what the foreseeable future and i do appreciate some of the numbers that we've seen and that we've seen as you said that we may be on the way to good news or those were your words in terms of the bottoming out here. but one of the things i know we've talked about before is the

unemployment rate for different degrees of education. so when we're talking to young people i think it's important for them to understand what is the unemployment rate for high school dropouts this month? >> 15.5%. >> 15.5%? and then what's the unemployment rate for high school graduates? >> 10%. >> uh-huh. and then what is the unemployment rate for college graduates? >> 4.8%. >> that is quite a difference. and i know one of the president's main focus here has been for -- i think he said that students should get one year of college or post-high school or some kind of advanced education so you see this drama change from 15.5 to 10% to 4.8% if you have a college degree so there's a full difference going from 15.5 if you haven't graduated from high school to 4.8% if you've graduated from college. is that correct? >> that's correct.

>> the other thing that i've noticed as we look at some glimmers of hope here, we talked about our unemployment rate in minnesota. but the commerce department recently reported that pretax profits at u.s. corporations rose from $42.6 billion in the first quarter to $1.3 trillion. the first quarterly increase after six straight declines. were you aware of those numbers? >> no, i wasn't. >> this just came out recently. we do know that profitable companies are more likely to hire than those that are faultering. have you seen this before in the unemployment rates when you have more profitable companies that you will not exactly that same month but you may see more hiring in the future? >> yeah, i'm not sure at the company level but i know on the national numbers you do tend to see the -- during early parts of expansion you do see the profits going up prior to the employment. but the employment does lag a little bit but it almost always goes in that order.

>> right. so that -- that that this fact that we've seen some better profitability rates for our companies, which is as i said it is the first -- it's the first quarterly increase after six straight quarter declines. so that's after like a year and a half. so this could be a good sign if you believe my numbers which i believe are accurate. >> yes. >> all right. and i know that chairman cummings brought up the consumer confidence. that when we talked about that a lot last month because there's increases in unemployment but at the same time the consumer confidence numbers are going up which may again help with people buying things; is that right? >> that's correct. >> sort of as we look at what -- what the glimmers of hope here to summarize just from my perspective, we have the fact that the companies seem to be not in every sector but some of these companies seem to be evening out or actually seeing

some -- some improvement. we have consumer confidence up. what are the other glimmers of hope that you see? >> just to me a lot of it revolves around consumer spending even the profitability of companies relies on consumer spending picking up. >> uh-huh. >> having -- like i say, having the consumer confidence pick up is a good sign. the consumer confidence doesn't always track well with consumer spending but it does for major changes. that's the sort of thing, i think, that i find encouraging, you know, the -- i don't know how i would judge the housing market but that's going to be an important thing probably in the recovery going forward. >> yeah, do you have any statistics on that because actually i had some realtors in my office from minnesota, like 30 of them, and they had been very glum every time they came in, every six months and suddenly they were in very upbeat moods. compared to how they were before. and they said that they were starting to sell a number of

first time homes. they said the tax credit was incredibly helpful. the $8,000 tax credit that as we reach the end of the year that a lot of younger people who are first time home buyers were starting to buy. you would most likely not have those statistics. or do you? >> yeah, you know, i don't -- i don't have the statistics right in front of me but i have a rough -- a rough notion that the -- certainly the inventory of new home sales is still pretty high. i think it's like a year's worth of inventory. but i think it's kind of like the job growth. it's not as high as it was but it's still high. >> exactly. >> i haven't looked at the numbers really carefully lately but my general impression is that i agree with you. that there maybe are some indications that the decline in the housing is slowing. >> all right, thank you very much, commissioner hall. >> just one last -- just a few questions, mr. hall. according to a study by the

national center for public policy and education, i want to piggyback of the excellent questions of miss klobuchar, the rising cost of college even before the recession threatens to put higher education out of reach for most americans. the report found published college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007 while median income rose 147%. student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade and students from lower-incomed families on the average get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families. "new york times" recently reported the shrinking endowments colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier students. even on institutions that have pledged to admit students are finding a way of studies who will pay the full cost of

tuition and state and local government budget deficits will probably mean that state college and community college tuitions will have to rise. in light of the questions miss klobuchar asked about dropouts high school graduates and college graduates given the factors that i just stated, isn't it likely that income disparities will grow if only wealthier families can afford to send their children to college? >> the benefits to education -- people with higher education have higher wages. they have lower unemployment rates. they have higher labor force participation rates. that's been going on for decades. and that's not likely to change in the future. >> so in other words, the more education you have. >> yes >> the less you are likely to lose your job. >> correct? >> and was that true in the -- in the 1980s and 1990s? >> it's been true for decades.

>> and workers who are less educated are more likely to lose their jobs currently and, therefore, less able to be able to send their children to college. what does that mean about income disparities for the next generations and other things being equal? >> uneven access to education means you have uneven outcomes in the labor market. i think that's a safe thing to say and that will probably continue to be true. >> very well. do you have anything else, mr. brady >> no. >> miss klobuchar? >> no, i don't. >> i think miss klobuchar pretty much summarized it. it's good to hear some news not going in the negative direction. you've given us is few things to feel a bit optimistic about and hopefully when we see you next month, we'll have even better news. but thank you very much. >> thank you.

[inaudible conversations] >> the nation's payroll contracted last month. the unemployment rate rose to 9.4%. the highest jobless rate in almost 26 years. though these numbers are tough, they also -- they're also much more than numbers. behind every one of these job

losses is a family, an individual who -- community that's trying to make a through the deepest recession in a decade. and are hurt. hurt badly by it. but there's also some signs of hope today. analysts as you know and many have reported had expected that we would lose more than 500,000 jobs in may. instead, we lost 345,000. jobs. nearly a third fewer than were expected. that's the lowest number of job losses since the past september and the fourth month in a row that we're shedding fewer jobs than the month before. now, i don't expect that to satisfy anyone. it doesn't satisfy me. it doesn't satisfy the president. it doesn't satisfy our economic advisors. particularly it doesn't satisfy anyone who's out there

struggling to get by. and it's especially the case for our nation's factories. we lost more than 150,000, 150,000 of those jobs last month. in states hardest hit by the restructuring of the auto industry. i might add my state of delaware. been particularly hit. hard by the automobile industry. along with michigan and the big states. and let me be very clear. the lower job rate loss is not our goal. less bad, less bad, is not how we're going to measure success when we measure success here in the white house. we will not be satisfied until we're adding jobs on a monthly basis. providing working americans with a stable job, dependable income and ensuring that everyone who want to make their way in the middle class has a shot to get to the middle class. that's why we're continuing to enact, continuing to do everything we can to turn this economy around.

and jump-start the american job machine which has a way to go yet. so look, in just over 100 days, the recovery action is only 100 days old, there's new economic activity and job creation in every single state in this country. for example, more than $11 billion in highway funds and highway construction funds have been made available for a total of 3,600 projects in states all across the nation. and i'm pleased that today's report shows some signs, some signs that all this activity is having its desired impact. construction on -- down 59,000 jobs in may. cutting in half the average of 125,000 jobs lost each month over the first four months of this year. and so there is some direct signs that what we're doing is having an impact. and yes, it's an encouraging

sign but i want to make it clear that -- and caution everyone, there's certainly going to be more setbacks on the road before we get finally to recovery. as much progress as already made, we still have a long, long way to go on the road to recovery. and that's why on monday, the president and i will be announcing our plans to ramp up the recovery act implementation over the summer. and over the longer term we know that economic future of this country depends on the unique skills of the working men and women of this country. on them getting health care and getting those health care costs under control. and on building a clean energy future to build this new economy on. so together, these initiatives will not only spark job growth today but we are absolutely convinced they're going to serve as a foundational platform for an economic growth spurt of tomorrow, not based on a bubble but based on real sound economic practices.

and growth. and we're working to build that foundation every day we're here. and i think we're making some discernible progress. i remain confident that the country is going to emerge in this recession and ematernal stronger and wiser than it was before we went in. we're going to take steps to reform the excesses that brought this economy down. to ensure that the benefits of growth are shared with hard-working and middle class families. last time we were in a recovery, we had productivity increase and people lost 3%, middle class folks lost 3% of their economy, the productivity grew 20%. and they've got 3% behind. that's not the objective of this administration. so when this growth occurs, we hope everyone's going to share in it. we think it will. so president obama and i are going to do everything we can to meet the goals we stated but in the end it's going to be the

enduring spirit and actually the boundless ingenuity of the american people that's going to allow us to prevail. to sum it up, encouraging signs but a long, long way to go. thank you all very much. thank you very much. >> next, on c-span, "new york times" columnist david brooks talks about the obama administration. health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius testifies about her department's annual budget. and federal reserve chairman ben bernanke discusses the economy at a house hearing.