Unemployment Rate Currently Sits at 5.4%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS) of the United States Department of Labor released the April job numbers early Friday morning.

According to the BLS, a total of 223,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were added in April, while the national unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 5.4%. According to the BLS, job gains "occurred in professional and business services, health care and construction".

Expectations were that the US economy would add 228,000 jobs in April. The markets, however, cheered the release as it was seen to fall into a "sweet spot" - strong enough, but not so strong that the Federal Reserve would feel compelled to raise interest rates in the near-term. There was an expectation earlier in the year that the Federal Reserve would begin to raise interest rates in June, however things have changed and the start of an interest rate tightening cycle is now slated for later in the year.

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The number of employed Americans rose 192,000 to 148,523,000 in April, while the number of unemployed Americans fell by 26,000 to 8,549,000. This resulted in an unemployment rate of 5.4%, down 0.1% from the month before.

The number of people not in the labor force (those Americans who are neither employed or officially unemployed) continued to increase in April, up 19,000 from the month before.

The labor force participation rate, which measures the size of the civilian labor force against the size of the civilian noninstitutional population, rose slightly to 62.8% in April.

The unemployment rate for adult men declined slightly (0.1%) in April to 5.0%, while the unemployment rate for adult women stayed unchanged at 4.9%. The unemployment rate for teenagers (16 to 19 years) dropped 0.4% to 17.1%.

Source: BLS.gov

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