US unemploymnet rate falls
Employers decreased hiring for the second straight month in April but the unemployment rate still fell to 8.1 percent, giving mixed messages about the economy’s strength ahead of President Barack Obama’s November re-election bid.
Employers added 115,000 workers to their payrolls last month, the Labor Department said.
The reading keeps fears alive that the US economy is losing momentum and dampens hopes that a stretch of strong winter hiring signaled a turning point for the recovery.
The unemployment rate ticked a tenth of a point lower to a three-year low, as people left the work force. The jobless rate is derived from a separate survey of households, which showed a drop in the number of jobs in April.
Still, the government revised upward its initial estimates for payroll growth in February and March by a combined 53,000. That left the six-month average of job growth at 197,000, nearly exactly where it would have been had April job growth come in as expected at 170,000.
“We’re still growing just gradually,” said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.
“Hiring is coming back into line with what you would expect with sluggish growth.”