April employment numbers from the business and household surveys have just been released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The headline number of increased jobs was a surprisingly strong 115,000 and March was revised slightly upward. Education and health services, two largely government-supported sectors accounted for the biggest increase, 46,000 jobs, but sctual federal government jobs declined by 8000. Courier and delivery jobs also had large gains, which makes sense since they declined sharply last month, likely due to immigration enforcement. Manuifacturing employment remains weak. There may be some indications of artificial intelligence impact on IT jobs as that category has shown declines over the past few months. And as usual, certain kinds of adjustments tend to cloud the data.
The household survey showed no change in the unemployment rate. It also showed a decline in employed persons, but I view the household survey as less accurate than the business ones. Businesses are more likely to have accurate data and individuals in households may have various reasons for prevaricating. There is a continuing, and now growing again, divergence in the two surveys. People also reported having fewer full-time jobs and more part-time ones. I think all this data from the household survey is seriously skewed by the immigration enforcement efforts. Average wages rose modestly, probably at a lower rate than inflation. (BLS Report)
