Quick Facts:
- The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent in April and has remained in a narrow range of 4.0 percent to 4.2 percent since May 2024. The number of unemployed people, at 7.2 million, changed little in April.
- Employment continued to trend up in health care, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and social assistance. Federal government employment declined.
- The number of long-term unemployed increased by 179,000 to 1.7 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 23.5 percent of all unemployed people.
- The number of people employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.7 million, changed little in April.
Looking Forward:
- Job growth was stronger than expected in April despite worries over the impact of President Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs against U.S. trading partners. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 177,000 for the month, slightly below the downwardly revised 185,000 in March but above the Dow Jones estimate for 133,000.
- A broader unemployment gauge that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons, or the underemployed, edged lower to 7.8%.
- American workers have at least one thing going for them. Despite the uncertainty about fallout from Trump’s policies, many employers don’t want to risk letting employees go – not after struggling to bring people back from the massive but short-lived layoffs from the pandemic. “For now, the unemployment rate and the number of people filing claims for jobless benefits every week remain low by historical standards,” Boston College econo- mist Brian Bethune said this week.
- The April jobs report comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the global trading system through the use of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners, which has created economic uncertainty on top of the White House’s efforts to shrink the federal government. Elyse Ausenbaugh, head of investment strategy at JPMorgan Wealth Management, noted, “The survey feeding the report occurred in the second week of April, which I remember as the peak of tariff uncertainty and whiplash. Still, the broad labor market remained on solid footing.”
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – The Employment Situation – April 2025
