A couple of months ago, a recovery in the U.S. labor market seemed to be at hand. That hope has proved as fleeting as a job with the Census Bureau.
The surge in hiring of census workers in May was responsible for virtually all the 431,000 jobs created that month. Private sector employers, who had added 218,000 jobs in April, added only 41,000 workers in May—and that was mainly from temporary jobs.
The Census Bureau has already started cutting the more than 500,000 temporary workers it brought on to do....