'The Employment Situation' Report for April Shows Employers Are Taking Hiring Down a Notch, Employee Wage Growth Slowing The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in April.
By Sherin Shibu
Key Takeaways
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its jobs report for April.
- Employers added jobs, but below analyst expectations and the average.
- The average hourly pay is growing at its slowest rate since June 2021, per Bloomberg.
A Friday report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) titled "The Employment Situation" showed that unemployment rates rose slightly in April while hiring missed the mark.
Employers added 175,000 new jobs in April, which was well below the 242,000 monthly average of the past year and below analyst expectations of 235,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.8% in March to 3.9% in April.
The areas with the highest job increases were health care, which added 56,000 jobs in April, social assistance, which jumped by 31,000 jobs, and transportation and warehousing, which saw a 22,000 job increase.
Other sectors, like construction and government, added jobs as well in smaller quantities while electronics and appliance retailers posted 3,000 fewer jobs.
Related: CPI Report: Inflation Rose More Than Expected in March, Driven By Housing and Energy Costs
Bloomberg reports that the overall job gain is the smallest recorded by the BLS in six months, and could be due to slowing growth in the service sector.
The BLS report, however, downplayed the changes.
"Both the unemployment rate, at 3.9 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 6.5 million, changed little in April," the BLS report stated, emphasizing that the unemployment rate has stayed in the 3.7% to 3.9% range over the past nine months.
Employees saw average hourly wages increase by seven cents in April, for a 0.2% increase up to $34.75 per hour. At the same time, the average workweek went down by 0.1 of an hour to 34.3 hours.
The average hourly pay is growing at its slowest rate since June 2021, per Bloomberg.
Stocks jumped on Friday after the report's release, perhaps because the report showed sustained low unemployment numbers.
"The bottom line is this report is quite reassuring," American economist and Harvard professor Jason Furman said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
The BLS will release its next monthly employment report on June 7.
Related: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Says He Is Worried About 'Stagflation' — Here's Why
Reports indicate the Federal Reserve could, in turn, consider cutting interest rates later this year.
