This new, slower trend could, of course, reverse if growth picks up and part of May’s very low topline number is due to the strike at Verizon, a one-off event which, according to the Bureau, reduced the payroll count by about 35,000. But even adding those information workers back into May’s tally, the three-month bar in the smoother would rise to 127,000, still well below the 200,000 trend over the last 12 months.

The negative report surely puts the nail in the coffin of a Fed rate hike at their meeting later this month. Prior to the report, the futures market probability of a June hike was about 20 percent. After the release, it quickly fell to 4 percent.

Weak job creation is weighing on the labor force participation rate, which is down 0.4 tenths of a percent over the last two months. At 62.6 percent, the LFPR is back to where it was last December. While retiring baby-boomers have been correctly cited as a structural—vs. cyclical—factor lowering participation, the recent decline has also occurred among “prime-age” workers, those 25-54. In other words, what we’re seeing here is more than a benign, demographic trend; it’s a trend that is also a function of weak labor demand failing to pull people into to the job market.

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But it would be a mistake to write off these dour numbers. Moreover, while the Fed can certainly do no harm by holding rates steady, that’s not the same as helping. Fiscal policy is looking more and more like an essential, missing ingredient in labor demand, and with borrowing costs still as low as they are, a smart move by policy makers would be to quickly start up an infrastructure program, perhaps in the critically important areas of water safety or our long-ignored public school facilities.

Clearly, in the midst of both political dysfunction and a contentious election, this would be a heavy political lift. But it’s still the right thing to do.