WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th July, 2020) Employers in the United States added the largest number of jobs for the month in May as businesses gradually reopened from lockdowns and other restrictive measures imposed to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic, while the rate of layoffs and discharges also neared pre-pandemic levels, the US Labor Department said in a monthly report on labor market specifics.
"This was the largest monthly increase of hires since the series began," the report dubbed Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) said, citing an increase of 2.4 million job hires to a series high of 6.5 million for May.
The JOLTS report said total worker-employer separations in May decreased by 5.8 million to 4.1 million, the single largest decrease since the series began. Within separations, the so-called quits rate increased to 1.6 percent while the layoffs and discharges rate fell to 1.4 percent.
"The rate, which had reached a series high of 7.6 percent in March, is now much closer to the pre-pandemic rate of 1.2 percent in February," the report said.
Previously, the Labor Department reported that another 4.8 million Americans rejoined the labor market in June.
Some 3 million Americans have contracted the novel coronavirus and the virus-related death toll has exceeded 133,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.�
