Unemployment drops to lowest level post-recession

The unemployment rate has hit a new, but welcomed milestone.



The U.S. unemployment rate is now 4.3%. This is the lowest it's been since 2001.



However, job gains missed the mark by a wide margin. The economy only added 138,000 jobs last month, missing the 185,000 mark expected by analysts. Job gains have occurred with an average monthly gain of 181,000 over the past 12 months.



The number of unemployed persons has decreased by 774,000 since January (now totaling 6.9 million), though the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged over the month at 1.7 million.



The labor force participation rate declined by 0.2% to 62.7% in May, and the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons was little-changed at 5.2 million.



Job-wise, most of the gains occurred in professional and business services (38,000), food services and drinking places (30,000), health care (24,000) and mining (7,000).