US job increase slower than expected in May

WASHINGTON - US employers added a lower-than-expected 75,000 jobs in May, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent, the lowest level since December 1969, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Job gains continued to trend up in professional and business services and in health care, the bureau said.

May's total nonfarm payroll employment is up from the downwardly revised April number of 224,000, it said. The March figure has also been revised down from 189,000 to 153,000, the data showed.

The May employment figure, which CNN said in its report is "surprisingly low," vastly contradicts the 185,000 job gains economists have predicted for the month.

After revisions for April and March, jobs gains have averaged 151,000 per month over the past three months, the bureau said.

The unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent in May, the lowest level in almost half a century.

Average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers rose 6 cents to $27.83 in May. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent.

The US Federal Reserve signaled an open attitude toward rate cuts this week, as factors including the escalating global trade tensions added to the anxiety over the sustainability of US economic expansion.

"We are closely monitoring the implications of these developments for the US economic outlook and, as always, we will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday at a conference in Chicago.