April’s payroll gain reflected a 168,000 increase in private employment, compared with the median estimate for 190,000. Over the three months through April, job gains have averaged 208,000 per month. In 2017, during the same January-to-April time frame, the average monthly climb was +177,000.
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Economic growth is expected to rebound in the current quarter after a slowdown in the first three months of the year as Republican-led tax cuts, coupled with increased limits on public spending, are set to add fuel to the economy. The unemployment rate for adult women was 3.5%, the lowest level since December 2000.
In Alaska, March was the 29th consecutive month of job losses recorded by the State Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
He was a referring to a monthly statistic of working-age Americans who are not in the labor force.
Even U-6, which rose above 17.0% in the Great Recession, has fallen to an astonishing degree. The rate had been at 4.1% for the past six months. And the contraction in America’s labor force will put limits on growth – and fiscal pressure on Social Security – unless we start implementing policies that make having children less hard for America’s young people, and that allow more prime-age workers to enter the country through immigration. Journal, “The unemployment rate will likely fall further”.
“[Politicians are] using improvement in the numbers to ignore the disparities, but there’s nearly no celebration to be had”, Perry said before adding that African-Americans were “the sacrificial lambs for full employment”.
The implications are being reveled in outbreaks of labor unrest over compensations levels. However, that has failed to translate into higher wages, at least in a meaningful way.
But average hourly earnings could be understating wage inflation.
Wages were slightly up, by 2.6 percent, to $26.84 hourly. April’s job growth was below economists’ expectations for a gain of 193,000. The unemployment rate includes anyone 16 or older who is actively searching for work in its calculation, which means students, retirees and others not in the labor force are excluded.
Total employment increased by 164,000 people. Over the year, construction jobs have increased 3.7% with residential building improving 5.1%, specialty trades 4.2%, nonresidential building 3.1%, and civil engineering 1.2%.
The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy, was up 1.9 percent year-on-year in March after a 1.6 percent rise in February.
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“Wages haven’t been able to break out of the 2.5% to 2.8% range”, Panday said. A faster wage growth could possibly encourage the Federal Reserve “to move faster to raise interest rates”. Any figure less than 300,000 for weekly initial jobless claims is considered good.
