The April Employment Report

It is the first Friday and whether or not you do the First Friday devotions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its employment report for April.

The employment report came out better than Wall Street anticipated, but it was still pretty awful. The establishment survey still showed a huge 539,000 job loss. Employment in the household survey was up. Perhaps not statistically significant, perhaps just noise, but I'll take it.

In the establishment data, services took the same hit as goods production (down 269,000 jobs vs 270,000). Private jobs in services fell even more dramatically (down 341,000) with the difference coming from the growth in government jobs.

The aircraft industry looks to have lost 4,700 jobs in April.

In terms of the Postal Service, printing etc. was down almost eight thousand, paper down three and a half thousand, and finance was down twenty five thousand.