Although the figures remain on the upside, the number of new people hired in April was below what many economists had anticipated, leading some to believe that a post-pandemic recovery may be longer in the offing.
Officially, employers in the U.S. added 266,000 new jobs in April, with the vast majority of those jobs in the restaurant and bar sector.
The hotel industry accounted for around 54,000 news jobs, with employment up by 19,000 in the healthcare industry.
For the first time in several months, the number of new construction jobs was static.
“Some businesses are cautious about ramping up hiring, given the pandemic and related uncertainty,” observes the Wall Street Journal in looking at the latest numbers.
Construction employment stood at 7.4 million in April, which was equal to numbers reported in March. But even though the beginning of the year saw an increase in building jobs, the industry is still some 2.5% off from where matters stood the month before the Covid-19 outbreak.
In a statement, Ken Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America, said that the fact that employment in the industry has stalled is due to a variety of factors, including “unprecedented intensity and range of cost increases” and supply-chain disruptions.
Residential construction firms, one of the most durable parts of the industry, actually gained 3,000 employees during the month. But the nonresidential sector was off by roughly that same number.
Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh issued a release upon publication of the latest jobs report, noting that despite the somewhat flat hiring numbers, “labor force participation is at its highest point since last August and the number of people expressing hesitancy about returning to work due to the coronavirus is at its lowest point in the pandemic.”
Noting that the current unemployment rate of 6.1% is a substantial improvement over 14.7% recorded last April, the financial website Motley Fool posited that “the U.S. economy still has a lot of recovering to do.”
By Garry Boulard
