business growth Credit: Leckamon/Shutterstock.com

The employment situation report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a 1.4% decrease in overall unemployment in May as the economy added 2.5 million jobs, including 3,200 in the legal industry, which had shed over 60,000 jobs between April and May. 

The legal industry, consisting of attorneys, legal secretaries, paralegals and others who make their living in the law, has been battered by furloughs, layoffs and other austerity measures over the past two months.

But after a disastrous April, the industry is starting to rebound, even as news of layoffs at firms continues to trickle out in June. The industry currently employs 1,097,500 people, down 50,000 from the same point last year, when there were 1,147,400 workers in the sector. 

Even amid the news of modest improvement, some industry experts predict that legal industry layoffs will actually continue for the next several months. But that wasn't the case in May, and the broader economy showed signs of life as well, after the coronavirus contributed to more than 42 million people filing for unemployment since mid-March.

Professional services, the heading under which the legal sector falls, added 127,000 jobs in May after losing 2.2 million in April. Within that count, the biggest gains were in building services (68,000 jobs added) and temporary help services (39,000), while employment in management declined by 22,000. 

The national unemployment rate, down 1.4% month over month, still sits at 13.3%, and the number of unemployed persons still stands at over 20 million. 

There were encouraging signs in several industries, as construction employment increased by almost half a million, retail added 368,000 jobs and manufacturing added 225,000. 

Government, especially state and local, has continued to hemorrhage jobs as those entities face massive budget shortfalls due to anticipated tax revenue declines. In May, government workers were reduced by 585,000, with 487,000 of those being in local government roles. 

Points of interest: 

  • Workers on temporary layoffs decreased by 2.7 million in May, down to 15.3 million. This follows an increase of 16.2 million layoffs in April.
  • Labor force participation rate increased by 0.6% to 60.8%, following a decrease of 2.5% in April.
  • The number of workers not in the labor force who want a job was at 9 million, down 954,000 from the previous month after increasing by 4.4 million in April.
  • Leisure and hospitality increased by 1.2 million jobs in May, following devastating losses of 7.5 million in April and 743,000 in March, as COVID-19-related restrictions began to lift in various localities. 
  • Revisions for March and April showed 642,000 more jobs were lost than previously reported.

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