Which Industries Are Hiring The Most/Least Right Now - What May Jobs Data Shows

Author: Piero Cingari | June 02, 2023 11:10am

The latest U.S. labor market report showed a remarkable rise in non-farm payrolls in May, with a surprising gain of 339,000.

This marks the strongest pace of employment growth since January 2023.

This surprising jump also bucked projections of a decline in job growth to 180-190,000 the revised April result of 294,000, signaling healthy employment conditions overall.

May's jobs report also indicated notable variations in employment growth between industries, underscoring the importance for investors to monitor these sector-specific trends closely.

Which Industries Added the Most And Least Jobs in May?

• Private education and health services led with 97,000 new hires, driven by a 52,400 employment growth in health care.
• Professional and business services witnessed an increase of 64,000 jobs. 

• Leisure and hospitality added 48,000 employees, with food services and drinking places contributing 33,000.

• Construction industry saw a surge of 25,000 jobs.

• Employees in transportation and warehousing grew by 24,200, driven by transit, ground passenger transportation, and couriers.

• Financial activities hired 10,000 employees, with finance and insurance adding 7,100 jobs and real estate and rental and leasing adding 2,800 jobs. Within this industry, commercial banking saw 5,800 layoffs.

• Utilities, wholesale trade, and mining/logging had minimal employment growth.

• The nondurable goods industry experienced a loss of 5,000 jobs.

• The information industry suffered the most job losses, down by 9,000. Publishing and telecommunications segments both recorded a loss of 2,500 jobs.
   

How Those Industries' ETFs Performed: Winners And Losers

While tech-related industries such as semiconductors, the internet, and software have had strong growth in the last month, driven by the AI rally. Other sectors such as agriculture, mining, and retail have lagged.

Here are some industry ETF performance highlights over the past month: 

• VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) up 17.1%.
• First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NASDAQ:FDN) up 12.3%.
• iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (NYSE:IGV) up 11.3%.
• SPDR S&P 500 Retail ETF (NYSE:XRT) down by 4%.
• VanEck Gold Miners ETF (NYSE:GDX) down by 5.2%.
• VanEck Vectors Agribusiness ETF (NYSE:MOO) down by 7.4%.

Now Read: Benzinga's 'Stock Whisper' Index: 5 Stocks Investors Are Secretly Monitoring But Not Talking About Yet

Image: Pixabay

Posted In: FDN GDX IGV MOO SMH XRT