Evidence from May’s Employment Numbers on the Benefits of Education

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Released: June 2010

Related Topics: Employment & Wages, Education

Authors:

Michael Greenstone • Director, The Hamilton Project; 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Introduction

May employment numbers, released by the Labor Department today, demonstrate continued momentum behind our nation’s economic recovery. With 431,000 new jobs, building on the 290,000 jobs created in April, this marks the first time we’ve had five consecutive months of positive job growth since the beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007. Yet, the great majority of these jobs (411,000) were temporary hires as part of Census surveying efforts. The private sector only accounted for 41,000 of the new jobs, indicating that the long-run prospects for the labor market remain challenging.