USA stocks slipped on Friday after the Labor Department reported the slowest pace of job creation since September, the latest disappointing reading on the American economy. Even as the unemployment rate declined, the percentage of working-age Americans seeking jobs remained near historic lows.
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The overall Canadian labour market was stuck in neutral last month as a solid employment gain in the services sector was wiped out by job losses in the goods-producing industry, especially manufacturing.
Still, most economists said they were not anxious about the weaker hiring in April. The jobless rate, projected to ease, stayed at 5 percent, while wage growth accelerated. Average hourly pay rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier, above the sluggish 2 percent pace that has been typical for the past six years.
Yet retailers cut 3,000 jobs to mark the first drop since the end of 2014. “The equity markets up until the last weeks have had a pretty significant run up over the last two to three months”. In January, the jobless rate was 9.3%. The unemployment rate in the 19 European nations that share the euro currency is more than double the USA rate, at 10.3 per cent.
That’s because investors are concerned about whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next meeting in June.
The same report on Friday indicated that the Labor Department revised its statistics for job creation during February and March downward by a total of 19,000. Employers have hired 2.3 million college graduates in the past 12 months while letting go of 425,000 workers with a high school diploma or less.
A lot of Americans have started looking for work again in recent months because they believe there are opportunities out there now. The unemployment rate in the 19 European nations that share the euro currency is more than twice the USA rate at 10.3 percent.
China’s economy, meanwhile, grew 6.9 per cent previous year, the slowest pace in a quarter-century.
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The province, where the country’s vast oil sands are located, has suffered because of lower resource prices. But it expanded by 6.7 per cent from a year ago in the first quarter, leading some analyst to forecast that it may be levelling-off. A sharp rebound in auto sales in April (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-auto-sales-recover-in-april-2016-05-03) also suggests consumers are still fairly confident. The economy added 35,000 services jobs.
