The Latino unemployment rate climbed to 5% in May, a 0.2% increase compared to the prior month, according to new stats published by the Bureau of Labor statistics on Friday. Similarly, the employment population ratio dropped from 64.1 to 64.0, while the participation rate remained flat at 67.3.
The increase coincides with the country-wide rate, which ticked up from 3.9% to 4%. This despite the economy adding 272,000 jobs last month, exceeding all expectations from economists surveyed by Dow Jones, who predicted an increase of 190,000 payrolls. Health care, government, leisure and hospitality and "professional" services were the areas with the most gains. The average gain of the past 12 months had been 232,000.
Another passage of the report showed that average hourly earnings increased by 4.1% compared to the same month of last year. The inter-annual figure for April was 3.9%.
Economists now expect the Federal Reserve to continue holding off on cutting interest rates, the consensus now being that it will begin doing so in December. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will announce its next decision on Wednesday, hours after a new inflation report provides fresh figures about the state of the economy.
Economists believe that a decreased hiring should contribute to keep cooling inflation as employers stop offering more money to prospective hires. Fewer people who are employed are looking to change their posts, while the rate of people quitting has help steady for six month.
"We're certainly seeing, within firms, that the hire rate among more costly or higher-paid workers has been going down," said Fiona Grieg, global head of investor research and policy at Vanguard.
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