Nonfarm payroll employment edged up (+88,000) in April, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 4.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job gains continued in several service-providing industries, including health care and food services, while employment declined in retail trade and manufacturing.
An important note. The BLS has issued some very sweeping revisions to employment reports for the last 5 years. That means this number could be subject to an upward revision in the coming months.
Let's look a bit deeper into the numbers.
Goods producing dropped 28,000, with construction dropping 11,000. My guess is the increase in non-residential construction is absorbing some of the losses from residential construction.
Education and health was up 53,000. The education and health category has a steady increase for the last 5 years. So long as the US population continues to age, this trend will probably continue. So basically, the employment report can count on this category to continually add jobs to the figures.
Government increased 25,000. The fact that government employment is responsible for about 30% of total monthly employment growth should raise a few eyebrows. When the public sector is responsible for a pretty large chunk of job growth there might be a problem.
Retail lost 26,000 jobs. Remember these are April numbers, so we're beyond letting people go for the Christmas season. While productivity increases may be responsible for some of the losses, retail is still pretty dependent on the "human touch". That means that letting people go could mean retail sales are not where people want them to be.
Here's a graph of the y/t change in retail sales from Martin Capital. Note they are still strong, but have been declining for the last year or so.
This is not a good report. Expectations were for a low number anyway, and the initial report was below those expectations.
6 comments:
The bobbleheads on Bloomberg the other day were chortling that April employment numbers generally surprised the financial community to the upside. They bragged about how strong April employment numbers typically were. They surely did not anticipate this disastrous report. If this April employment report is the strong month for current 2007 economy, then the rest of the year promises to be an employment nightmare.
The 10,000 social services jobs caught my eye.
Charles of MercuryRising
http://www.phoenixwoman.wordpress.com
Not to worry, the stock market charges ahead.
Geeze, I sure don't understand this stuff.
One other key measure to note - The Civilian Labor Force number was revised down @400, so BLS is projecting a smaller labor force along with fewer jobs. Another number to watch.
Construction employment unchanged in April? This is not a good thing. April is the month they staff back up after having laid everyone off for the winter to avoid having people on payroll when there's no work to be done due to inclement weather.
Only up by 88,000 huh? Well, I'm sure all the folks about to get the axe at IBM will be all the more thrilled:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070504_002027.html
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