U.S. Employment Rose in April

Today's employment news release reported that on a seasonally-adjusted basis, the U.S. added 115,000 nonfarm jobs between March and April. Private-sector payrolls contributed 130,000 jobs over the month, while government dropped by 15,000.

Professional and business services (+62,000), retail trade (+29,000), leisure and hospitality (+20,000), and health care (+19,000) posted the largest gains while transportation and warehousing (-16,600), other services (-2,000), information (-2,000), and construction (-2,000) saw the biggest job losses.

The seasonally-adjusted jobless rate remained little-changed at 8.1% in April, though it declined by 1.1 percentage points over the past year. The number of unemployed continues to drop, from 12.7 million in March to 12.5 million in April.

For more details, see the full press release. And stay tuned to this blog for Oregon's own employment news release, scheduled for Tuesday, May 15th at 10:00 AM.