Markets reacted with glee to the April jobs report out this morning as employment trends blew away expectations.
Total employment increased by 115,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost double the market’s expectations for a gain of 62,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate was little changed at 4.3 percent.
‘Investors worried that layoff announcements from tech giants like Microsoft and Meta could mean even more widespread layoffs ahead, their fears have not been borne out by the data this time around,’ Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, told the Daily Mail.
This is the second consecutive month of better-than-expected job growth: The March report saw a gain of 178,000 jobs, which like April was also well above the consensus view.
Wood told us the stable unemployment rate makes it even more likely for the Federal Reserve to hang tight and wait for more data before changing interest rates.
Deeper trends behind the data suggest that as the US population ages and immigration plummets, the amount of job growth needed to keep the unemployment rate under control is also sliding, a point outgoing Fed chair Jerome Powell made earlier this year.
Markets surged higher this morning as the April jobs report blew away Wall Street’s expectations
The jobs report arrives just a week after a separate report showed solid US economic growth in the first quarter, despite the Iran conflict and rising oil prices.
Gross domestic product (GDP), which measures all the goods and services produced in the economy, grew at a 2 percent annualized rate in the year to March, up sharply from the fourth quarter rate of 0.5 percent.
US economic growth in the first quarter was bolstered by strong consumer spending, a huge gain in business investment from AI and higher government spending after Congress finally resolved the longest government shutdown on record last year.
