The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April, well above the 55,000 analysts had expected. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%.
Jobs gains and losses, by sector:
Health care added 37,000 jobs, in line with its 12-month average of 32,000 per month.
Transportation and warehousing added 30,000 jobs, driven by couriers and messengers (+38,000), while the retail trade grew by 22,000 jobs.
The federal government shed another 9,000 jobs.
Information lost 13,000 jobs, continuing a trend that has seen the sector shed 342,000 positions, or 11%, since its peak in November 2022.
Unemployment held steady:
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%, with 7.4 million people unemployed.
The labor force participation rate edged down to 61.8%. Long-term unemployed workers held roughly steady at 1.8 million, accounting for 25.3% of all unemployed people.
Part-time work for economic reasons jumped:
The number of people working part time for economic reasons rose by 445,000 to 4.9 million in April. These are workers who would prefer full-time employment but had their hours cut or could not find full-time work.
Wages up slightly; workweek ticked up:
Average hourly earnings rose 6 cents, or 0.2%, to $37.41 in April. Year-over-year earnings growth came in at 3.6%. The average workweek edged up 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours.
Prior months were revised:
February was revised down by 23,000, from -133,000 to -156,000. March was revised up by 7,000, from +178,000 to +185,000.
Job creation remained solid in April, as businesses shrugged off uncertainty brought on by the war in Iran and higher gas prices."
Read more via The New York Times, Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Wall Street Journal
NOTE: The ADP Employment Report and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Jobs Report utilize different data, and therefore provide differing reports. ADP's report includes only private sector data.
According to ADP's latest National Employment Report, the U.S. private sector added 109,000 jobs in April. The gains topped the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 84,000 and were the strongest since January 2025.
Sector gains and losses:
Education and health services led all sectors with 61,000 jobs added. Trade, transportation, and utilities gained 25,000, while construction added 10,000 and financial activities added 9,000.
Professional and business services lost 8,000 jobs.
Job gains and losses by region and business size:
The West led all regions with 46,000 jobs added, followed by the South (+34,000), the Northeast (+18,000), and the Midwest (+11,000).
Small establishments with fewer than 50 employees added 65,000 jobs. Large establishments with 500 or more employees added 42,000. Medium-sized businesses saw gains of just 2,000.
Pay growth held steady:
Job-stayers saw year-over-year pay growth of 4.4%, down slightly from the previous month. Pay growth for job-changers held steady at 6.6%.
Small and large employers are hiring, but we're seeing softness in the middle. Large companies have resources to deploy, and small ones are the most nimble, both important advantages in a complex labor environment."
Read more via ADP, CNBC
The labor market held largely steady in March, with job openings flat and hiring bouncing back after a weak February. The stability, though, looks different depending on what sector you're in.
Job openings were unchanged:
Job openings were unchanged at 6.9 million in March, with the job openings rate at 4.1%.
Openings fell in professional and business services (-318,000) but increased in finance and insurance (+98,000).
With job openings still below the number of unemployed workers, the ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers held at 0.9 in March. (At its 2022 peak, that ratio was 2 to 1.)
Stability, in this market, is less a general condition and more a matter of where you are standing."
Hires increased:
Hires increased to 5.6 million (+655,000) in March, recovering from a February drop, with the hires rate rising to 3.5%.
Gains were broad-based, led by transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+108,000), professional and business services (+165,000), and accommodation and food services (+124,000).
Layoffs edged up:
Total separations were little changed at 5.4 million.
The quits rate ticked up to 2.0%, with 3.2 million workers voluntarily leaving their jobs.
Layoffs and discharges edged up to 1.9 million, a rate of 1.2%; layoffs increased by 272,000 over the year.
The layoff rate in the information sector rose from 1.3% to 2.4% year-over-year, the largest increase of any sector.
The quits rate inched up, signaling workers are more optimistic about their prospects for finding new jobs than they indicated in survey data."
Read more via Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg, Indeed Hiring Lab
The Trump administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against The New York Times and escalated its investigation of Nike, signaling an aggressive push to reframe DEI programs as unlawful discrimination.
The EEOC sued The New York Times this week, alleging the paper passed over a white male editor for a deputy real estate editor role in 2025 because of his race and sex, citing the Times's own published diversity goals as evidence of discriminatory intent. The Times called the suit "politically motivated" and said it hired the most qualified candidate.
The EEOC's sole Democratic commissioner voted against the Times lawsuit, saying she disagreed with the substance of the case and didn't believe it was a good use of scarce agency resources.
Separately, the EEOC filed a subpoena enforcement action against Nike in February, alleging a "pattern or practice" of discrimination against white employees and applicants through DEI-related programs, including race-restricted mentoring and leadership development opportunities and the use of race data in setting executive compensation.
The Nike investigation was initiated not by an employee complaint but by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas herself, an unusual move that legal experts say signals the agency is actively hunting for DEI targets rather than responding to worker claims.
The EEOC currently handles more than 88,000 discrimination claims a year. Legal observers warn that the outcome of the Nike case in particular could have significant consequences for DEI programs across corporate America.
Read more via The New York Times, EEOC, Fast Company
A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that increased ICE activity is associated with an employment drain for some American workers, not a boost.
The study is described as the first of its kind examining national labor market impacts of the Trump administration's ICE enforcement push.
Researchers found a "negative and significant impact" on employment of U.S.-born men with at most a high school education working in affected sectors like construction.
The researchers found no evidence that employers have raised wages to attract U.S.-born workers to fill vacated roles. Instead, the results reflect a reduction in overall demand.
The dynamic, according to the study, is that U.S.-born and immigrant workers often fill complementary rather than competing roles. When a construction company can't find laborers, it builds less, hiring fewer electricians, roofers, and other workers who tend to be U.S.-born.
In areas hit with an enforcement surge, employment among likely undocumented workers still in the U.S. fell 4%.
Researchers say the chilling effect under the current administration is larger than during past mass deportation efforts, in part because of the perceived randomness of enforcement.
Disruptions are showing up in specific sectors and regions but are difficult to see in national-level data, the researchers note.
Read more via Axios, The Washington Post
As AI reshapes white-collar work, a clear divide is emerging among corporate leaders over whether to translate productivity gains into layoffs or use them to accomplish more with existing staff.
Coinbase is cutting 14% of its workforce and PayPal plans to cut 20% of staff over the next two to three years, both citing AI adoption. Meta's CFO told investors the company doesn't know "what the optimal size of the company will be in the future" as AI takes on more work.
About 80% of companies using AI agents or autonomous technologies said they are cutting staff, according to a Gartner survey of 350 mid-level and above executives.
On the other side, Spotify is keeping headcount roughly flat and using AI to ship more product. Axon Enterprise's president emailed all 5,000-plus employees to assure them AI would not trigger layoffs, writing: "I am thinking of AI as the thing that allows our teams to do more, not the thing that replaces our teams."
IBM's chief human resources officer warned that companies focused solely on using AI for efficiency risk missing its bigger opportunity. Asked how many people IBM would employ in three years, she said her crystal ball said "more."
At some companies, a third path is emerging, with employees shifting to new roles as AI absorbs their current ones.
Read more via The Wall Street Journal
AI-related job cuts accounted for 26% of all layoffs in April, or 21,490 of 88,387 total cuts, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, marking the second consecutive month the technology has been the top driver.
Overall job cuts rose 38% in April from March, with the technology sector accounting for the largest share at 33,361 cuts.
"Market and economic conditions" remained the most cited reason for cuts throughout 2026, accounting for 53,058 total cuts year to date.
Layoffs in professional and business services, sectors considered vulnerable to AI displacement, rose by 150,000 in March from a year earlier, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by Yardeni Research.
Regardless of whether individual jobs are being replaced by AI, the money for those roles is."
Read more via CBS News, Challenger, Gray & Christmas
Crypto firm Coinbase is laying off 14% of its workforce, with CEO Brian Armstrong citing AI-driven efficiency gains and a move away from management layers as the primary drivers. Armstrong said engineers are now using AI to “ship in days what used to take a team weeks.” The company is eliminating what Armstrong called a "coordination tax" — layers of management that slow the business down. Going forward, some teams will consist of just one person and their AI agents, and there will be no "pure managers"; everyone will be expected to do hands-on work. Coinbase is one of more than two dozen major companies that have announced significant layoffs this year, many citing AI as a factor alongside cost pressures. Read more via Business Insider
Cloudflare is laying off more than 1,100 employees globally as the cybersecurity company accelerates a shift to an agentic AI-first operating model. CEO Matthew Prince said Cloudflare's AI usage has increased more than 600% in the last three months, with staff across engineering, HR, finance, and marketing running thousands of AI-driven workflows daily. The company reported first-quarter results that beat expectations and raised its full-year outlook for adjusted profit and revenue. Cloudflare joins Coinbase, Block, and others in explicitly citing AI efficiency gains as a driver of headcount reductions. Read more via Bloomberg
Virginia will require pay transparency and ban wage history inquiries starting July 1. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed SB215/HB636, requiring employers to disclose salary ranges in all public and internal job postings. Employers who fail to comply face penalties of up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for subsequent violations. (Morgan Lewis)
Colorado's House passed a bill requiring large employers to offer affordable health coverage or pay a fee to support Medicaid premiums. HB26-1327 applies to employers with more than 500 Medicaid-enrolled employees; an estimated 37,200 Medicaid-enrolled workers in Colorado are employed by companies that would be subject to the fee. (Colorado House Democrats)
New Jersey adopted rules codifying the ABC test for determining employee vs. independent contractor status, over objections from business groups, gig workers, and freelancers who warned the rules would reduce flexibility. The rules take effect October 1. (New Jersey Monitor)
Germany: A $584 billion infrastructure stimulus passed last year remains largely unspent, tied up in bureaucratic bottlenecks and a deep cultural resistance to public debt. Business confidence hit a six-year low in April, and the mayor of one rural community outside Berlin said he has yet to receive a cent of the $2 million in stimulus funds he had hoped to invest in roads and schools. (The Wall Street Journal)
Israel: New research from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies finds that AI is changing who becomes unemployed in Israel, with young and entry-level tech workers increasingly affected. Workers in high AI-exposure occupations rose from 14%-16% of all unemployed Israelis in 2019-2022 to 20%-25% by 2025. "The era of hi-tech workers' immunity is over," said one of the study's authors. (Jerusalem Post)
New Zealand: The unemployment rate fell slightly to 5.3% in the first quarter, below expectations, but the labor market remains slack, with employment growth, wage increases, and workforce participation all coming in below forecasts. Economists expect the full impact of the Middle East conflict on employment to lag by six to twelve months. (Reuters/MSN)
Switzerland: The Swiss Federal Council examined a parliamentary proposal to impose an "immigration tax" on foreign workers or the employers who hire them and concluded it would face "numerous legal obstacles" and would offer no demonstrable economic benefits. Applying such a tax to EU and EFTA nationals would also conflict with Switzerland's free movement of people agreement with the European Union. (The Local)
United Kingdom: Median annual pay settlements among major British private sector employers held steady at 3.5% in the first quarter of 2026, according to a survey by Incomes Data Research. The proportion of firms offering pay raises of 4% or more rose above 20%, up from 16% in February, and IDR noted that April awards may come in higher due to the influence of a 4.1% increase in Britain's minimum wage that took effect that month. (Reuters)
