The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3 percent.
Economists had forecast the economy would add 65,000 workers and the unemployment rate would remain unchanged.
The estimate for February was revised down by 23,000 to a loss of 156,000. The March rebound, however, was revised up by 7,000 from a gain of 178,000 to
185,000.
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 6 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $37.41. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.6 percent, significantly above the rate of inflation. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 11 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $32.23.
The labor market in the U.S. has experienced a significant shift away from dependence on an immigration-driven workforce. Jobs numbers that may seem anemic compared with recent years may actually indicate healthy—even robust—growth under current conditions, according to economists.
Many economists now estimate the so-called “break-even” rate of job growth—the rate required to keep unemployment from rising—may be as low as zero. By contrast, when immigration was running at higher levels from 2021 through 2024, the economy needed to add more than 100,000 jobs monthly to keep pace with labor-force growth.
Retirements are also driving down the growth of the labor force, as an increasing number of members of the large baby boom generation leave work and, later, smaller generations fail to fully replace them. Job growth is also being back by the Trump administration’s focus on shrinking government payrolls, part of its program to “reprivatize” the U.S. economy.
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