Gallup Good Jobs Rate Up Slightly From April

The May Gallup Good Jobs (GGJ) rate was 45.5 percent, up slightly from April's 44.9 percent and the highest rate for May since Gallup began measuring it in 2010. The GGJ average rate for the first five months of 2016 is 44.8 percent - 0.7 percentage points higher than the average for the five-month start to 2015 and more than a full point higher than the January-May averages for any of the previous five years. The growth of the monthly rate and of the rate for the year so far suggests an underlying increase in full-time work beyond the seasonal changes in employment.

The workforce participation was 67.3 percent in May, matching the percentage for April. The average for 2016 so far is 67.1 percent, slightly higher than the average workforce participation of 66.9 percent for 2014-2015, indicating that more workers are coming into, or re-entering, the workforce than leaving.

Gallup's unadjusted U.S. unemployment rate, which reached a new six-year low of 5.2 percent in April, rose slightly to 5.5 percent in May. Even with the bump, it is the first time since Gallup began tracking the unadjusted unemployment rate in 2010 that it has been below 6.0 percent in May.