Blame the grads. The unemployment rate typically increases in the early summer months as jobless college graduates flood the labor market, said economist Anirban Basu.
“It is possible to have people graduating in [early] May, joining the labor force and declaring unemployment,” he said.
But typically unemployed grads don’t influence labor statistics until June, he said. And this time, the sagging labor market is not entirely their fault.
“When the unemployment rate goes up by 0.3 percent in one month, that’s pretty substantial,” said Basu, president of Sage Policy Group in Baltimore. “There’s things happening that are specific to the Washington area.”
The Washington region’s unemployment rate increased to 5.7 percent last month. Nationally, the unemployment rate rose by one-tenth of a percent to 9.1 percent in May while several of the nation’s most populated metropolitan areas also saw an uptick.
Things aren’t always as they seem for job seekers. Mark Amtower, a government contracting consultant, noted that often hundreds of jobs open every day in the contracting community, which gives job seekers the notion of security.
“But those bigger companies [that are doing the hiring] are also more likely to lay off people faster because they have the massive personnel machines that can go out and recruit people when they need them,” he said. – Liz Farmer
