The May Jobs Report in 8 Charts

The U.S. unemployment rate ticked down to 3.8%, the lowest reading since April 2000, and employers added 223,000 jobs in May.

Broader measures of unemployment and underemployment, including discouraged workers who have stopped job hunting, as well as part-time employees who would life full-time work, also moved down the past month. All four alternative measures of joblessness are at their lowest level since the recession.

Wage growth picked up in May for both weekly and hourly wages. Both measures are near, but not quite at, their fastest pace in recent years.

Over the past year, the number of jobs increased by 1.6%, a rising pace from a few months ago but slower than in 2015.

The share of Americans either working or looking for work, known as the labor-force participation rate, fell slightly last month. The rate has trended downward over the past decade largely due to the retirement of the baby-boomer generation.

Participation rates are much higher for Americans ages 25 to 54, when retirement or education do not keep many people out of the workforce. Even among these workers, however, participation rates have slipped slightly in recent months.

The median duration of unemployment has been growing shorter over the past eight years. Still, the typical spell of unemployment lasts longer than during previous periods of such low unemployment in the mid-2000s and late 1990s.

Unemployment rates have come down for workers of all education, with unemployment rates the lowest for those with a college education. Their unemployment rate fell to 2% last month.

Unemployment rates have trended downward for men and women of all races and genders. Last month, the unemployment rate for black women fell below the unemployment rate for Hispanic women for the first time on record.

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