Canada had added a solid 41,000 jobs in March. The share of people in the US with jobs in April was 59.7%, which was a small decrease from the prior month.
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On the positive side, numerous jobs have been created in higher paying industries and average wages rose by 8 cents to $25.53 an hour, Hale said.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5 percent, the Labor Department reported. Over the past three months, job gains have averaged 200,000 per month. But wage growth still remains below its 20-year average of 3 percent.
“Today’s meager jobs number is reflective of the weakness in the broader economy, which still has not completely recovered from the Great Recession”, Job Creators Network President Alfredo Ortiz said in a statement. – One of the biggest letdowns in the recovery is that wages haven’t been rising very fast. Economic growth fuels job growth and wage growth. The U.S. economy expanded at just a 1 percent annual rate over the past six months.
“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 160,000 in April”, the report noted.
Gold has jumped one per cent after U.S. non-farm payrolls data for April came in weaker than expected, boosting expectations the Federal Reserve will delay further interest rate increases.
USA short-term interest rate futures contracts rose after the payrolls data, suggesting traders see a better chance the Fed will wait longer to act. But a hiring slump, if sustained, could disrupt those plans. The February and March numbers were downwardly revised by 19,000 jobs.
Mining employment continued to decline in April (-7,000).
Collectively the transportation and warehousing sector gained 8,600 jobs in April, with warehousing and storage adding 6,500 of those, offsetting the loss of 3,700 railroad jobs. The figure was below analysts’ expectations and well off the 208,000 jobs added in March. They see a 42 percent probability of a rate increase in September and a 61 percent chance at the December meeting. There were also gains in April in management and technical consulting services (up 21,000) and in computer systems design and related services.
Hiring in education and health care remained steady, climbing 54,000 last month, above its three-month average of 49,000.
The U.S. economy has increasingly splintered along education lines – a long-term trend evident in the April jobs report: Workers without college degrees suffered job losses. It’s become a pattern: Between 2010 and 2015, growth has averaged 0.8 in the first quarter but 2.6 percent in the second through fourth quarters, according to IHS, a consulting firm. And “the unemployment rate held steady at 5%”.
Japan’s economy contracted in the final quarter of a year ago, though its jobless rate is also below the United States’.
China’s economy, meanwhile, grew 6.9 percent past year, the slowest pace in a quarter-century. Freddie Mac has downgraded its economic forecast for the GDP in the first quarter from 1.8 percent down to 1.1 percent.
Growth has sagged in the past six months as slower economies overseas and a stronger dollar cut into US exports of factory goods.
The province, where the country’s vast oil sands are located, has suffered because of lower resource prices.
Consumers have also been cautious.
But retailers cut jobs for the first time in more than a year.
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“The 35 percent surge in layoffs from March to April is not necessarily a sign of a weakening economy”, said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger Gray & Christmas.
