April Jobs Report Tops Forecasts as Unemployment Holds at 4.3%

The April jobs report cleared expectations, but it also showed an economy that is still cooling at the edges. Employers added 115,000 jobs last month, far above forecasts around 55,000 to 65,000, while the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

The strongest gains came from health care, transportation and warehousing, and retail trade. Federal government employment continued to fall, underscoring how uneven the recovery in hiring has become. The labor force participation rate held at 61.8 percent and the employment-population ratio was little changed at 59.1 percent, suggesting the labor market did not draw many new workers back into employment.

Beneath the headline gain, the report showed more slack than the unemployment rate alone suggests. The number of people employed part time for economic reasons rose by 445,000 to 4.9 million, a sign that more workers were still looking for full-time hours. Average hourly earnings for private nonfarm workers rose 6 cents to $37.41, up 0.2 percent from March and 3.6 percent from a year earlier, a pace that points to steady but not accelerating pay growth.

Revisions also complicated the picture. February payrolls were marked down by 23,000 to a loss of 156,000 jobs, while March was revised up to a gain of 185,000. Over the February-through-April period, employers added an average of 48,000 jobs a month, down from 61,000 over the prior three months. That trend suggests the labor market remained resilient, but with noticeably less momentum than earlier in the year.

The report sharpened the debate over whether the United States is heading toward recession or simply moving through a slower phase of expansion. For now, the hiring data argue against an abrupt downturn, even as the breadth of job growth narrows and underemployment rises. Economists said the combination of firmer-than-expected payrolls and steady unemployment could reinforce expectations that the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates unchanged for some time, even as higher gas prices and uncertainty tied to the Middle East add another layer of risk to the outlook.

The BLS released the data at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday, May 8, 2026, and the message was clear: the labor market is still standing, but it is no longer running at full speed.