The ever-higher borrowing costs the Fed has engineered have weakened some key sectors of the economy, notably the housing market. Most economists doubt that the Fed will succeed and expect a recession to begin sometime this year. They hope to achieve a so-called soft landing - cooling the economy and the labor market just enough to tame inflation yet not so much as to trigger a recession. He and other Fed officials have expressed concern that a robust job market exerts upward pressure on wages and prices. Job gains for February through April marked the weakest three-month average since January 2021 yet still slightly exceeded the pre-pandemic pace.įed Chair Jerome Powell himself sounded somewhat mystified this week by the job market’s durability. Looked at broadly, the nation’s job market appears to be easing into a more moderate phase, roughly akin to the pace of hiring that preceded the pandemic recession of 2020. In one sign of the benefits of a consistently tight job market, Black unemployment dipped in April to 4.7% - the lowest such level in government records dating to 1972. G7 finance ministers to vow support for Ukraine, seek ways to spur global economy as debt risks loom Layoffs are still relatively low, job openings comparatively high. The job market has remained durable despite the Fed’s aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes over the past year to fight inflation. And hourly wages rose last month at the fastest pace since July, which may alarm the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.Īpril’s hiring gain compares with 165,000 in March and 248,000 in February and is still at a level considered vigorous by historical standards. Job gains for those months was downgraded by a combined 149,000. In its report Friday, the government noted that while hiring was solid in April, it was much weaker in February and March than it had previously estimated. The jobless rate fell in part, though, because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. WASHINGTON (AP) - America’s employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.
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