\n<\/p>\n
US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market <\/strong>as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before.<\/p>\n Jobs gains were concentrated in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, retail and social assistance. Altogether, 106,000 new jobs were added to those four industries.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, job losses were seen in federal government employment \u2013 which is down 348,000 since November 2024 \u2013 and the information sector.<\/p>\n A series of major changes over the last year \u2013 tariffs, government layoffs, changing immigration policies and, now, rising oil prices amid conflict in the Middle East \u2013 have rattled the US economy and destabilized the labor market.<\/p>\n The new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also included revisions to previous job figures. Last month, employers added 185,000 jobs, far exceeding economists\u2019 expectations of about 70,000. But in February, the US lost 156,000 jobs \u2013 initially reported as a drop of 92,000 jobs \u2013 an unexpected and major contraction just before the US-Israel war in Iran.<\/p>\n Private employers added 109,000 jobs in April, the largest increase in job growth since January 2025, according to payroll firm ADP. Healthcare industry jobs continued to <\/strong>fuel growth, along with modest increases in construction, trade, transportation and utilities industries. Professional industries, however, lost 8,000 jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cSmall and large employers are hiring, but we\u2019re seeing softness in the middle,\u201d Dr Nela Richardson, ADP\u2019s chief economist, said in a statement. \u201cLarge companies have resources to deploy, and small ones are the most nimble, both important advantages in a complex labor environment.\u201d<\/p>\n jobs chart<\/p>\n In its decision late last month to keep rates steady, the US Federal Reserve cited slow job growth among several factors, including elevated inflation and continued uncertainty in the Middle East.<\/p>\n Ahead of the job report\u2019s release, Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said that the forecasts of 55,000 to 70,000 new jobs added would be enough to keep the labor market steady and potentially hold off rate hikes from the Fed, which would push mortgage rates even higher.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether workers are seeing real income gains or losses this spring is crucial for housing affordability, especially as home prices soften but mortgage rates push higher,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty. Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[8725,16102,1111,2626,7652,84,2622,4885,3785,2625,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-49213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-added","9":"tag-april","10":"tag-data","11":"tag-employment","12":"tag-gain","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-surprise","16":"tag-uncertainty","17":"tag-unemployment","18":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}