Employment climbed by 339,000 in May, beating analyst expectations of about 190,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate nevertheless rose by 0.3 percentage point to 3.7%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
The biggest job gains happened in professional and business services, government, health care, construction, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance.
Professional and business services added 64,000 jobs in May, after increasing a similar amount in April. Contributing to that total were the 10,800 jobs added in accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services.
Average hourly earnings rose by 11 cents, or 0.3%, to $33.44. Over the past 12 months, they've increased by 4.3%.
The BLS also revised upward the employment numbers for March and April by 93,000 more than previously reported, with March's number increasing by 52,000 from 165,000 to 217,000 jobs, and the change for April revised upward by 41,000, from 253,000 to 294,000 jobs.
"The further acceleration (April 2023 increase: 7,700 jobs – May 2023 increase: 10,800) of jobs across accounting, tax prep, bookkeeping and payroll in May is yet again an affirmation of the accelerated talent demand within our industry," said Werner Barnard, chief revenue and growth officer at Sapro, which provides workforce talent to public accounting firms. "Compared against the encouraging, but stable growth rate of jobs for professional and business services as a whole (May increase: 62,000 jobs), our industry definitely poses as a growth outlier. Given the absence of definitive signals about a pending recession, I believe firms will serve their business and growth strategies well to deliberate a clear and concise workforce and capacity plan for the upcoming 2023 tax season and ultimately the peak demand periods of 2024. Equally so, firms should prepare to pay more for their local, in demand talent, as our latest Lightcast compensation data indicates median salary increases of 11.1% for 2023."
