The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its April 2024 Report, so let’s take a look at how employment fared over the last month.
The great news is:
- In April, total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 175,000 people.
- Health care, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance the largest share of new jobs in April.
- The average work week for private non-farm payroll employees decreased by 0.1 hours to 34.3 hours in April.
- In April, average hourly earnings for private non-farm payroll jobs increased by 0.2%, or 7 cents, to $34.75. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.9%.
The good news is:
- The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job increased to 5.6 million people. Keep in mind, these 5.6 million people were not counted as unemployed because they were unavailable to take a job or were not actively looking for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
- There was no change to the labor force participation rate, at 62.7%, which has shown little change over the past year.
The bad news is:
- In April, the unemployment rate increased slightly at 3.9%, or 6.5 million people.
- The number of long-term unemployed, people who were without a job for 27 weeks or more, increased slightly to 1.3 million people, accounting for 19.6% of total unemployed persons.
- The number of discouraged workers who believed there were no jobs available to them increased to 362,000 people.