5 things to watch in the April jobs report


America’s job market is expected to bounce back after a sluggish month.

The Labor Department will publish the April jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday. Here’s what to watch.

1. Finding the sweet spot: Hiring surged in February as employers added 313,000 jobs, but it slowed in March to a gain of just 103,000 well below the average for the past year.

Economists polled by FactSet expect April’s payroll reading to fall right in the middle: a solid 190,000 new jobs.

2. 4% unemployment? The economy has been at 4.1% unemployment for six straight months, the lowest since 2000. Businesses are struggling to fill vacancies in a tight labor market. Economists expect unemployment to inch down to 4% in April. It may not stop there.

“The unemployment rate has some leg to go down even further,” Satyam Panday, senior economist at S&P Global Ratings.


3. Rising wages: Wages have picked up modestly after years of stagnation. Economists project wages in April to climb 2.7% from a year ago, which would mirror the gain from March. Inflation is closing in on the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, gasoline is heading toward $3 a gallon, and companies are reporting cost pressures. So wage growth could help offset higher prices.

4. Wall Street’s reaction: Good news for Main Street isn’t always welcome on Wall Street. In January, wages climbed at their fastest pace since 2009, and the market freaked out. Investors are hyper-sensitive to concerns about inflation, which could cause the Fed to accelerate its plans to raise interest rates. If wage growth comes in much higher than expected, it could set off another round of volatility in the markets.

5. Tracking Trump: The economy created about 2.5 million jobs in the first 14 full months of the Trump administration. That’s about 300,000 fewer than were created in the last 14 months of the Obama administration.

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