The 7 most depressing stats and quotes about the May jobs report

"Economists had anticipated 160,000 new jobs last month, and even that was seen as 'not a very high number,' NPR's Yuki Noguchi reported. But it would have been enough to keep up with population growth. The actual growth of 38,000 jobs falls far short of that standard." [NPR]

"The jobs report was bad, bad, bad: There is no positive spin to it. Not only was May a particularly weak month — the worst in almost six years — but revisions dragged previous months lower," Joseph Lake, director of global forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, wrote in a research note Friday. [US News]

"Going into the payroll number, it was clear that unless the jobs report was horrible the Fed was going to hike in either June or July. This now assures that June is off the table but may not rule out July." — Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist, Mizuho Securities USA. [MarketWatch]

"Verizon employees were on strike in May during the survey period for the report, protesting for higher wages. Information services employment, which Verizon workers would fall under, dropped by 34,000 jobs on net. This was a dramatic drop for a sector that hadn't lost jobs on net since November 2015...To be fair, adding back the 34,000 jobs from the information sector would still leave the report well below expectations, so this isn't the whole story." [Business Insider]