June 2001 — 2001-06-01

Advance copies of this statement are made available to the press under lock-up conditions with the explicit understanding that the data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the labor market data we released this morning. The job market remained weak in May, although the weakness was not as pronounced or quite as widespread as in April. Total nonfarm payroll employment held nearly steady, edging down by just 19,000 following the steep loss of 182,000 jobs (as revised) in April. The unemployment rate was little changed over the month at 4.4 percent. Manufacturing employment fell by 124,000 in May, bringing factory job losses thus far this year to 470,000. To put this recent string of large employment reductions in perspective, the job losses in the industry over the first 5 months of this year have been roughly equivalent to the deepest job cutbacks observed during the contraction of the early 1990s.