{"id":430306,"date":"2026-05-08T19:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/05\/us-april-non-farm-payrolls-115k-vs-62k-expected\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T19:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:40:14","slug":"us-april-non-farm-payrolls-115k-vs-62k-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-april-non-farm-payrolls-115k-vs-62k-expected-430306\/","title":{"rendered":"US April non-farm payrolls +115K vs +62K expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Prior was +178K (revised to +185K)<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Two-month net revision -16K<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">February was -133K (revised to -156K). January was +160K <\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.3% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Prior unemployment rate 4.3%<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Unrounded unemployment 4.337% vs 4.256% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Participation rate 61.8% vs 61.9% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">U6 underemployment rate 8.2% vs 8.0% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average hourly earnings +0.2% m\/m vs +0.3% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average hourly earnings +3.8% y\/y vs +3.8% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average weekly hours 34.3 vs 34.2 expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Change in private payrolls +123K vs +75expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Change in manufacturing payrolls -2K vs +5K expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Government payrolls -8K vs -5K in March<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The US labor market enters April having staged a sharp but flattering rebound. March nonfarm payrolls rose by 178K, while January was revised up by 34K to +160K and February was revised down by 41K to -133K, leaving the two prior months a combined 7K lower than previously reported. Smoothing the volatility, payrolls have averaged just 68K per month over the last three months \u2014 only modestly above the breakeven pace the labor market now requires.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The composition is doing a lot of the work. Healthcare alone accounted for 76K of March&#8217;s gain, much of it strike-affected workers returning to payrolls, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3% from 4.4% partly because the labor force participation rate slipped to 61.9% from 62.0%, meaning some of the improvement reflects people exiting the labor force rather than finding work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">Wages cooled meaningfully. Average hourly earnings rose just 0.2% on the month and 3.5% from a year ago \u2014 the slowest annual pace since May 2021. The benchmark revision recast 2025 as materially weaker than real-time data suggested, raising the bar for April to confirm genuine momentum rather than strike-distorted noise.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior was +178K (revised to +185K) Two-month net revision -16K February was -133K (revised to -156K). January was +160K Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.3% expected Prior unemployment rate 4.3% Unrounded unemployment 4.337%&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}