The American economy gained 272,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 182,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate increased to 4.0%.
The net number of new jobs isn't bad. However, the total employment level was down 408,000 and the number of unemployed was up 157,000. Not so good.
Average weekly wages were up 4.9%, which is a little over 1% in real terms. That's fairly good, though I imagine the Fed would prefer it to be lower.
You should, maybe before Trump gets re-elected (because people have been lied to by much of the finance media and the idiots in the MSM don't know any better)...
track V/U and show how there has never been a tighter (favorable for job-seekers and people wanting to switch jobs, eg frictional unemployment) labor market under Trump as there currently is under Biden -- and that's despite supposedly extremely high immigration.
fyi: Demographics--Boomer bulge retiring...
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/08/baby-boomers-hit-peak-65-in-2024-why-retirement-age-is-in-question.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/retirement-baby-boomers-peak-65-financial-crisis/
We've recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic, but a still a couple million or so short of where we would have been if trends had been followed, i.e. 2+ million new jobs a year. Of course, baby boomers in prime retirement years, so available workers will be dropping.
A lot depends on the sector these days, I think. Manufacturing and skilled trades seem to be doing very well and wages are rising. Tech is more of a crapshoot. Some companies are laying off a lot of people and retrenching, while others are really ramping up anything AI-related. There has also been a lot of churn in the public sector as states and municipalities run out of Covid-era funding and lay people off.
As always, an uptick in the unemployment rate isn't necessarily a bad thing as it can also mean people are re-entering the labor force because the job market is looking better. You're only officially "unemployed" if out of a job *and* currently looking for a new one.