U.S. economy sheds just 20k jobs in April, better than expected

Posted May 2nd 2008 9:55AM by Joseph Lazzaro
Filed under: Employees, Economic Data, Recession

The U.S. economy shed just 20,000 jobs in April 2008, the U.S. Labor Department announced Friday, as the world's largest economy continues to come to grips with the deepest housing slump in more than a decade.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected the U.S. economy to shed 75,000 jobs in April 2008. The U.S. lost a revised 81,000 in March 2008, up from the earlier 80,000 estimate.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point to 5.0% in April 2008, from 5.1% in March.

The number of unemployed adults increased by 434,000 to 7.8 million in March 2008. Since March 2007, the number of unemployed adults has increased by 1.1 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.7 percentage points.

By sector, factory payrolls decreased 46,000. Builders cut 61,000 jobs, retail eliminated 12,400, and financial firms cut 5,000 jobs. On the positive side, service industries added 90,000 workers.

'Surprisingly mild April report'

Economist David H. Wang said the April 2008 jobs data was "surprisingly mild. It's relatively tame, given the poor data we've seen from other economic indicators, lately."

"Although the economy continues to shed jobs, 20,000 is not that much. Manufacturing continues to lose a large amount of jobs, but we already know about the problems in construction and housing, and the robust job increase in the services sector was a pleasant surprise," Wang said. "Of course, you can't read much into one month, but if we continue to see only mild job loss in the months ahead, that could say something about the depth of the U.S economic downturn. It may end up not being as long or as deep as some are fearing."

However, Wang said it was "too soon to tell" if the April 2008 jobs report was mild enough to guarantee a pause in the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate cut cycle.

Tags: inthenews, jobs, U.S. economy, U.S. Labor Department, unemployment, unemployment rate