Read the highlights of this week’s commentary from Helios:
April’s jobs report underwhelmed economists’ expectations with 431K new jobs in the month, a bit short of the 490K that was expected. On the positive side, February’s figure was revised upward by over 70K. The new jobs pushed the unemployment rate down to 3.6%, from 3.8%.
The tight labor market helped further accelerate wage gains across the economy with average hourly earnings rising 0.4% over the month and 5.6% over the last year.
The ISM manufacturing survey fell to 57.1 in March, though it stayed firmly in expansionary territory. Respondents put less emphasis on labor concerns, despite the high quit rates we have seen in the aggregate data. Taking its place on the list of concerns was high prices and parts shortages becoming more acute.
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