Economy Adds Workers But Jobless Rate at 9%
The New York Times reports:
The United States economy added far more jobs than expected in April as the recovery continued to pick up steam.
The Department of Labor said Friday that 244, a href="http://buyviagraonlinefree.net/" style="text-decoration:none;color:#676c6c">sovaldi< 000 jobs were added last month after a gain of a revised 221,000 in March. The unemployment rate rose to 9 percent in April from 8.8 percent in March.
As has been the case for several months, all of the increase came from private employers, which added another 268,000 jobs last month on top of the revised 231,000 in March, the monthly report said. Results of the previous two months were revised to show an additional 46,000 jobs were added.
Governments, struggling to balance budgets as they deal with shrinking revenues and growing deficits, cut 24,000 jobs last month. Most of the drop came at the local level, where 14,000 jobs were lost in April after a decline of 15,000 in March.
Economists said the report was generally good news.
“There seems to be more underlying momentum there than certainly had been feared going into the report,” said Nigel Gault, the chief United States economist for IHS Global Insight. “We do seem to be moving into the stage of the business cycle where we get self-reinforcing improvements in employee and consumer spending.”
But he and other economists said that there were offsetting factors, like falling government employment numbers, weak construction figures, no expansion in average weekly hours, and a small rise in average hourly earnings.
“This is simply not good enough to support consumption on a secular basis, and while we keep waiting for income gains to following payroll growth, such gains have yet to materialize in any significant manner,” Dan Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Company, said in a research note.
Still, April’s numbers exceeded the forecasts of analysts, who had expected a gain of 185,000 jobs over all, with the change in private payrolls of 200,000. The uptick in the unemployment rate that came even as employers were adding jobs was an indication that more people were entering the work force as hopes for hiring increased.
The monthly jobs report is a crucial snapshot of the economy as it tries to move from recovery to expansion, and the April figures covered a period when several indicators pointed to signs of weakness. The American economy grew at a tepid 1.8 percent in the first quarter, according to the government’s estimate for the first quarter. Personal consumption has slowed and construction remains weak, though winter weather was cited as a reason.
Turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has sent crude oil prices higher, pushing up the cost of gasoline, which in turn has taken a larger share of the money consumers have to spend. Supply disruptions in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have rippled through American industries, especially the automobile sector where plants have reduced production and idled workers.
Those auto plant shutdowns were one factor cited when the government reported Thursday that the weekly initial jobless claims rose to 474,000 last week, up from 431,000 the week before.
