US Unemployment Rate Hits Ten-Year Low On Strong Job Growth

The job market surpassed expectations in April with 211,000 added jobs, and unemployment dropped to its lowest rate in 10 years.

The figures supported the view of a USA economy in generally good health but with an increasingly tight labor market, which could begin to fuel inflation worries.

This month’s job growth was a nice change from the mere 79,000 jobs created in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Employers must decide whether to buy skills or build them, said Michael Stull, a senior vice president at the staffing company Manpower North America. A deputy White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said falsely at a briefing for reporters Friday that job growth in April occurred “especially” in industries where the president has focused: Coal mining, construction and manufacturing.

As a comparison, when the unemployment rate was at similar levels in 2007, pay scales were growing at 3.5%.

The state of economy should see further improvements thanks to better measures of unemployment and underemployment. A broader measure of unemployment, which counts unemployed people, discouraged workers and those working part-time who can’t find full-time work, also dropped to a almost 10-year low, at 8.6 percent. Healthcare employment continued to trend up over the month (+20,000).

The Dow Jones industrial average and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index both inched up. April’s figures come after March figures showed that employment in the legal services sector contracted in March.

A closer look at the data showed a loss of 50,500 positions in the more-desirable private-sector category, while the public sector added 35,200 jobs.

The data point to a stronger growth by the USA economy in the second quarter after a slow first quarter, the Los Angeles Times said Friday. While it acknowledged that the economy has been expanding at a slower pace of late, the Federal Reserve said that the slowdown as likely “transitory”. “The Fed will raise the federal funds rate again in mid-June as the economy is approaching full employment”, said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. Economists had expected wage growth to remain unchanged.

In April 1.5 million people were marginally attached to the labor force, which was down by 181,000 from a year earlier. In addition, though, average hourly earnings rose by 2.5 percent over the previous year, now at $26.19.