Summary Box: Census hiring lifts payrolls, but job creation at private companies sputters

Summary Box: Private jobs fizzle, census explodes

SOUNDS GREAT, BUT: The nation added 431,000 new jobs last month, the most in a decade. But virtually all of them — 411,000 — came from the federal government hiring temporary census workers.

NEW SIGNS OF CAUTION: Spooked by the European debt crisis and a jittery stock market, companies added just 41,000 jobs in May, the fewest since January. And state and local governments shed more than 20,000 jobs.

WEAKNESS BELOW THE SURFACE: The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people gave up searching for work and were no longer counted.