April Employment Report: 223,000 Jobs, 5.4% Unemployment Rate

From the BLS:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and construction. Mining employment continued to decline.
...
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised from +264,000 to +266,000, and the change for March was revised from +126,000 to +85,000. With these revisions, employment gains in February and March combined were 39,000 lower than previously reported.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the monthly change in payroll jobs, ex-Census (meaning the impact of the decennial Census temporary hires and layoffs is removed - mostly in 2010 - to show the underlying payroll changes).

Total payrolls increased by 223 thousand in April (private payrolls increased 213 thousand).

Payrolls for February and March were revised down by a combined 39 thousand.

This graph shows the year-over-year change in total non-farm employment since 1968.

In April, the year-over-year change was just under 3.0 million jobs.

This is a solid year-over-year gain.


The third graph shows the employment population ratio and the participation rate.

The Labor Force Participation Rate increased in April to 62.8%. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.   A large portion of the recent decline in the participation rate is due to demographics.

The Employment-Population ratio was unchanged at 59.3% (black line).

I'll post the 25 to 54 age group employment-population ratio graph later.

The fourth graph shows the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate was declined in April to 5.4%.

This was at expectations of 220,000, however there March was revised down ... still a decent report.

I'll have much more later ...