May was a good month for the American labor market. So were April and March. The economy is once again adding tens of thousands of new jobs across a range of industries - just don’t call it a boom, because apparently that would be rude.
Last year, America’s job market was trapped in what The Atlantic’s Rogé Karma dubbed the Big Freeze - a period when unemployment was low but hiring was slower than a DMV line. Now we’re in something like a spring thaw: employers added an average of 114,000 jobs a month this year. Compared with 2025, when the average was a paltry 10,000 a month, that’s a notable reversal. But it’s moderate growth, not a radical expansion, because nothing says “cautious transition” like a few hundred thousand new paychecks.
The great hiring slowdown of 2025 had a few possible explanations. When President Trump returned to office in January, his government immediately stepped up immigration enforcement, deporting hundreds of thousands of people. The Congressional Budget Office estimated net migration was 410,000 last year - about one-fifth of pre-Trump projections, though the Brookings Institution thinks it could be even lower. Fewer new people means fewer people looking for work, which might explain why unemployment stayed at 4.3 percent despite sluggish hiring. The sudden arrival and retraction of aggressive tariff policies also played a role; employers were essentially playing a game of “wait and see what the president does next.”
The labor market now seems to have shrugged off some of that decision paralysis. Remarkably, unemployment has stayed under 5 percent for about five years. Employers added 172,000 new jobs in May across sectors including leisure and hospitality, local government, construction, manufacturing, and health care. Until recently, health care was the only game in town - Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG US, noted, “There was no game in town other than health care in 2025.” But now other industries are joining the party, thanks in part to an aging population that refuses to stop needing medical attention.
Analysts have theories about why this is happening, but understanding the labor market involves guesswork, partly because the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps revising old data. Matthew C. Klein, an economics journalist, suggested that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown may have “bottomed out” - deportations are still high, but the growth rate has picked up enough to overcome some negative pressure. (Government surveys don’t distinguish between hires with and without temporary visas, so we’re flying blind on that front.)
Another possibility: businesses are feeling the effects of tax breaks from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, giving them more money to spend on personnel. Enthusiasm around AI - which has continued evolving at an astonishing pace, shrugging off critics’ bubble concerns - could also help. And last year’s tariff whiplash has largely subsided, thanks partly to the Supreme Court’s February ruling against the president’s approach. Businesses now have “a lot more certainty,” said Guy Berger of the Burning Glass Institute.
Will job growth continue? With Trump signaling that the war in Iran is about to end, energy prices have been falling - which could give employers confidence to keep hiring. “I don’t see anything on the horizon that would make me worried about the job market,” Berger told The Atlantic. “Especially if gas prices are off the table, there’s no active risk.”
Americans are largely unhappy with the president’s stewardship of the economy, so last month’s employment data handed him a much-needed political win. “IT’S RAINING JOBS,” Trump posted - ironic, given his history of calling BLS data “faked” and “rigged.” Clearly, he trusts federal data when it works in his favor. Ultimately, though, these numbers are more like a course correction - a return to normalcy after the hangover of a post-COVID hiring spree - not evidence of a “golden age.”
Meanwhile, the stock market continues smashing records, but consumer sentiment is abysmal. Inflation is surging faster than it has in years, hourly wages are growing slowly, and the Fed signaled yesterday that interest rates could rise in the future (though they’ll stay unchanged for now). Employers tentatively hiring again is an important signal - but it’s only one part of the story. The Atlantic also offers three other stories: Vice President Vance rebuked Israeli critics of the Iran deal; a piece argues the cult of delayed gratification is a lie; and a new memoir by a Montreal garbageman shows the actual work of cleaning up the world’s junk.