The US government announced that in May, 280,000 jobs have been added by the US economy. This increase is said to be the largest in five months; it helped deal with slow growth in the earlier year.

According to Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, “This is a good report. Despite the weak first quarter GDP reading, momentum in the economy is holding up”.

According to reports, the official unemployment rate increased slightly to 5.5% from 5.4%; this was because more people were seeking employment with improved job market. A year ago, the jobless rate in the country was at 6.3%.

Abel Saldana, who recently got a part-time job at an Irvine Chick-Fil-A outlet, said that it’s his luck to land the job as he needed something to pay his rent.

A UCI English major, Saldana looks forward to finally landing a professional position. He said that the job market is getting better; however it is still not easy to get a job in a career-oriented field.

A bigger measure of unemployment, which consists of discouraged workers, in addition to part-timers who wish for full-time jobs, continued to be at 10.8%; it indicates that many Americans still have not benefited from the recovery.

However, a sharp decrease in the proportion of the unemployed, who have been jobless for over six months, was a positive sign. This number dropped to 28.6% from 34.4% a year earlier and had hit 45% at the peak of the recession.