Economy adds 288,000 jobs in April as unemployment drops

By Kevin G. Hall McClatchy Newspapers

Employers added a solid 288,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate tumbled a sharp four ticks to 6.3 percent, the government said Friday in a report that’s sure to spark debate.

Mainstream economists had expected a number as high as 250,000, so the amount of new jobs in April was a positive surprise.

Under normal circumstances, the same would be true for the four-tenths of a percentage point drop in the unemployment rate, an outsized drop by any standard. But deep in the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was a number that showed the labor force shrunk by more than 800,000 workers and new entrants totaled far below that.

It suggests the unemployment rate fell because of workers exiting the labor market. Many of them are likely to be long-term unemployed workers who had reached the end of their jobless claims and completely left the workforce. The number of long-term unemployed fell by almost 300,000 in April.

Construction, manufacturing and government employment all bounced back in April, after posting very low numbers earlier in the year.