Slow Hiring in April, Unemployment Drops
The latest jobs report sends mixed messages on the strength of the economy.
| Posted Friday, May 4, 2012, at 9:47 AM
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
Just 115,000 jobs were added to payrolls last month, according to the latest jobs report from the Labor Department released Friday.
That's down from March, when employers added 154,000 jobs, and well below economists' estimates of about 160,000 jobs added, CNN reports.
Unexpectedly, the unemployment rate dropped in April from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent, a three-year low. That drop is being attributed to people leaving the work force.
In slightly better news, however, revisions from the February and March jobs numbers show 53,000 more jobs added in those months than previously thought. As Reuters explains, this puts the average hiring growth for the past six months at 197,000, which is almost exactly where it would have been had April's jobs report met expectations.
Reuters notes that slow April hiring indicates that strong job growth seen over the winter may have lost much of its momentum.
That's not great news for Obama's re-election campaign. Mitt Romney has already responded to the report, calling it "terrible" and "disappointing," as ABC News reports. The presumptive GOP nominee added that “we should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month."
