Gallup: Employers holding on to workers

That +14 figure is twice as high as last May’s Job Creation Index (+7), but also well below where the index stood in May 2008 (+21). 

The Gallup numbers also come not long after the Labor Department reported that the economy created an underwhelming 54,000 jobs in May, less than a quarter of April’s 244,000 new jobs. 

{mosads}Perhaps with that in mind, Dennis Jacobe, Gallup’s chief economist, wrote that employers had appeared in 2010 to go back to the normal model of bringing in more new employees in the spring than the winter – a pattern that has not occurred in 2011 so far. 

“As a result, the year-over-year change in the index has declined in recent months,” Jacobe wrote. “In turn, this suggests that job creation may be somewhat weaker than the raw index numbers indicate.”

Gallup found that its job index ranged from +12 in the West to +17 in the Midwest. 

In related news, the Labor Department also has signaled that summer employment for teenagers may be off to a decent start, with employment for 16- to 19-year olds expanding by 71,000 in May. 

That’s better than the 6,000 job increase from May 2010, but still behind the May 2008 and 2009 numbers.