Quick Facts:
- Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 428,000 in April.
- Unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6 percent.
- Job growth was widespread, led by gains in leisure and hospitality, in manufacturing, and in transportation and warehousing.
- The number of unemployed remained essentially unchanged at 5.9 million.
- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) little changed at 1.5 million.
- The number of job leavers – that is, unemployed persons who quit or voluntarily left their previous job and began looking for new employment – rose by 6,000 to 793,000 in April.
Looking Forward:
- The 428,000 net new jobs last month in the Labor Department’s Friday report is mildly encouraging since every major industry added workers. But the report also contains a warning that inflationary pressure may be starting to hurt the labor market.
- While the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6%, the labor participation rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 62.2%. Labor participation and the workforce have been trending up since January 2021 as lockdowns eased and vaccines rolled out. April represented the biggest labor participation decline since September 2020.
- Worker paychecks can’t buy as much as they did even a few months ago, and those without the luxury to work from home have been slammed by surging gasoline prices. Expectations for continued economic growth rest with solid consumer spending, but the jobs report raises the question of how long this will continue if real wages keep falling.
- The report likely will do little to sway the Federal Reserve from its current path of interest rate increases. The central bank announced Wednesday it would raise its benchmark interest rate half a percentage point in what will be an ongoing effort to stamp out price increases running at their fastest pace in more than 40 years.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
