The price of oil fell below $73 a barrel this morning, losing more than $2 following the release of U.S. employment data that cast doubts on the strength of the economic recovery, Reuters reported.

U.S. non-farm payrolls rose 431,000 in May; the largest monthly increase since March 2000 and the fifth consecutive monthly gain.

The job gains pushed the unemployment rate down to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent in April.

Private employers, however, hired fewer workers than expected last month; the federal government employed 411,000 census workers to conduct a population count.

“We were expecting bigger growth in private employment, and the figure looks relatively weak,” said Christophe Barret, an oil analyst at Credit Agricole. “We are going through a period of relatively slow growth in the U.S., and that explains why oil prices have fallen.”

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected private employment, which is an indicator of labor-market strength, to grow by 190,000 jobs in May.

The job data and slide in oil prices followed BP plc’s latest attempt on Thursday to contain the oil spewing out of an undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico.

The spill began April 20, when a BP-operated drilling rig exploded, killing 11 crewmen.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, in a letter to President Barack Obama, said a new six-month ban on deepwater drilling could cost that state up to 6,000 jobs in June, and 10,000 jobs in the next few months, CNNMoney.com reported.

“The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more,” Jindal said.

The top U.S. government weather agency said the Atlantic hurricane season, which started this week, could be the most intense since 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Rita severely disrupted U.S. oil production.