national economic expansion longest of its kind in two decades

The latest job numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the national economy added around 75,000 new jobs last month.
Added to the job growth from earlier this year, 2019 has now seen the addition of more than 820,000 jobs in the last five months.
While the numbers for 2019 are strong, the overall rate of job growth has slowed when compared with the first five months of 2018, which saw an addition of some 1.1 million new jobs.
Even so, the most recent BLS numbers means that starting next month the current economic expansion will break records as the longest such expansion in modern history, with new jobs now being added for more than 104 months in a roll.
That, according to analysts, beats out the country’s last extended period of job growth in the 1990s, with an unemployment rate that has been steadily declining from around 10 percent in early 2010 to just 3.6 percent this spring.
According to Lydia DePillis, a senior economics writer for CNN, one of the reasons why the nation’s unemployment rate is now so low is simple: “Employers have more open positions than they can easily find workers to fill them.”
Looking at the latest numbers, the Washington Examiner also noted that the jobless rate for people without college degrees is now at 3.4 percent, the lowest it has been in more than 25 years.
That statistic, said the paper, “is a sign that the decade-long expansion is benefitting economically vulnerable people and is reaching workers at the margins of the labor force.” 
The BLS numbers also show that new construction jobs were up by more than 8,100 in May, resulting in an overall industry unemployment rate of 3.7 percent, down from 5.4 percent in May of last year.

By Garry Boulard

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