In Ohio, the number of Ohioans working or actively seeking work rose by 36,000 last month to almost 5.8 million, following labor force gains of 34,000 in February and 28,000 in January.
Advertisement
The jobs numbers show the crude-producing province has failed to shake the negative effects of stubbornly low oil prices, which began to plummet almost two years ago. “Employment was never going to continue rising at more than 200,000 a month indefinitely”. The unemployment rate in the 19 European nations that share the euro currency is more than double the USA rate, at 10.3 percent. The construction industry added only 1,000 jobs in April, after adding 72,000 over the previous three months.
What’s surprising about the solid pace of hiring is that it coincides with such tepid economic growth. “For example, average hourly earnings growth ticked up to 2.5% year-on-year and the average work week increased by 0.4% month-on-month”. In total, that’s 19,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.
Data show the number of unemployed people was little changed at 7.9 million. The Fed signaled in March it expected to raise rates twice this year, though prices in the fed funds futures market suggest investors see just one increase in 2016.
Professional and business services added the highest number of jobs, adding 65,000 jobs in April.
US employers have been hiring at a healthy clip for six months even as the economy has slowed to an anemic pace.
And Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner says the decline in payroll growth largely reflects layoffs by retailers and modest additions in construction after those sectors ramped up hiring early in the year amid unusually warm winter weather. New Hampshire’s most recent reported unemployment rate, for March, was 2.6 percent – the second lowest in the nation, topped only by South Dakota. While the unemployment rate held at 5.0 per cent that was because people dropped out of the labour force.
BC added 13,000 jobs in April, with Statistics Canada saying the unemployment rate fell 0.7 percentage points to 5.8 per cent. It prompted some financial institutions, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays, to lower their interest rate hike expectations for this year to one from two before the report. The labor force participation rate edged down, consistent with what Fed policymakers feel is a longer-term trend given the country’s aging population. However, labor force participation contracted sharply.
Advertisement
William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, said in an interview Friday that the latest government data demonstrated that the labor market continued to improve gradually, in line with the Fed’s expectations. But wage growth still remains below its 20-year average of 3 percent. Since peaking in September 2014 mining employment has fallen by 191,000. Government payrolls fell 11,000 last month.
