U.S. Adds 115,000 Jobs in April, Crushing Forecasts as Unemployment Holds at 4.3%

American employers added 115,000 jobs in April, easily beating Wall Street's forecast of 65,000 and giving the Trump administration a rare piece of good economic news in the middle of a wartime sell-off, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3 percent and the number of unemployed Americans changed little at 7.4 million, the BLS said in its monthly Employment Situation release.

Health care led hiring with 37,000 new positions, followed by transportation and warehousing at 30,000, retail trade at 22,000 and social assistance at 17,000 — a mix that economists described as a "consumer-resilient" reading of the labor market despite Iran-war shocks to oil prices. Information services lost 13,000 jobs, the third consecutive monthly decline in the sector as artificial-intelligence-driven layoffs continued to roll through customer-support and back-office work. Federal government employment fell another 9,000, the BLS said, bringing the cumulative loss in federal headcount since October 2024 to a staggering 348,000 — the largest sustained federal contraction since the demobilization that followed World War II.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent for the month and 3.6 percent over the past year, well above the Federal Reserve's 2 percent inflation target but slowing modestly from the 3.8 percent annual pace recorded in March. The average workweek edged up to 34.3 hours. The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.8 percent and the employment-to-population ratio held at 59.1 percent, suggesting that the structural pull-back of older workers from the labor market that began during the pandemic has finally stabilized.

Markets cheered the report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 423 points in early trading, the S&P 500 climbed 1.2 percent and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.6 percent as traders concluded that the Fed would have political cover to leave interest rates alone at its June 17–18 meeting. The 10-year Treasury yield rose four basis points to 4.37 percent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a statement, called the report "evidence that the President's deregulation, energy and tariff agenda is delivering for American workers despite the costs of standing up to Iran."

But there were warning signs beneath the headline. The number of Americans working part time for economic reasons — the so-called involuntary part-timers — surged by 445,000 to 4.9 million, the largest one-month jump in nearly two years. The household-survey measure of employment, which often diverges from the establishment survey but tends to lead at turning points, actually fell by 91,000. And the BLS revised down the prior two months of payrolls by a combined 38,000. "This is a report with a strong cover and a soft middle," Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, told CNBC. "The Fed will not rush to cut, but they should not rush to hike either. The economy is not booming — it's coping."