The May 2012 BLS unemployment report is abysmal. Total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were only 69,000. April job gains were revised down, from 115,000 to only 77,000. March payrolls were also revised down, from 154,000 to 143,000. The below graph shows the monthly change in nonfarm payrolls employment.

May shows only 82,000 private sector jobs gained while government payrolls shrank another -13,000. In addition, 9,200 of those jobs were temporary.

JOLTS stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The March 2012 statistics show there were 3.39 official unemployed people hunting for a job to every position available^*. There were 3,737,000 job openings for March 2012, an increase of 4.83%, from the previous month of 3,565,000. The press shouts this is the largest number of jobs openings in four years, that's actually wrong. This is the highest number of job openings since July 2008. We were 8 months into the great recession and there were way less people needing a job in July 2008. Openings are still way below pre-recession levels of 4.7 million. Job openings have increased 71% from their July 2009 trough, yet opportunities are still way below the 1.8 persons per job opening at the start of the recession, December 2007. Below is the graph of March official unemployed, 12.673 million, per job opening.