The jobless rates for adult women, teenagers, Whites, Asians, and Hispanics showed little change over the month Despite the increase in unemployment, the participation rate was unchanged at 62.7% Wages also eased back with average hourly earnings rising 0.2% MoM, below the expected 0.3% increase and down from last month's 0.3% print.
Looking at the composition of the April job gains, the BLS notes that job gains occurred in health care, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing, offset by a big slowdown in government hiring.
... and a two-sigma miss to estimates of 240K.
In fact, as shown below, this was the biggest miss since Dec 2021
As usual, prior data was net revised lower, with the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February revised down by 34,000, from +270,000 to +236,000, and the change for March was revised up by 12,000, from +303,000 to +315,000. With these revisions, employment in February and March combined is 22,000 lower than previously reported.
What was behind the unexpected payrolls plunge? Blame government, which added just 8,000 jobs in April the least since Dec 2021, almost as if the government itself was goalseeking the final result.
Remarkably the result would have been even worse had it not been for a massive 363K addition from the birth death model.
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