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The US added 177,000 jobs in April, beating expectations and defying worries about the early impact of Donald Trump’s policies on the world’s largest economy.
Friday’s figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics exceeded the 135,000 predicted by economists polled by Bloomberg. But it marked a fall from March’s downwardly revised number of 185,000 posts.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 per cent.
S&P 500 futures extended gains after the data publication, trading 0.8 per cent higher ahead of the New York open.
The yield on two-year Treasuries, which tracks interest rate expectations and moves inversely to prices, rose 0.04 percentage points to 3.74 per cent as investors bet that the strong jobs number would keep borrowing costs higher for longer.
Traders in the futures market scaled back expectations of interest rate cuts this year, though are still betting on three or four cuts this year, beginning in July.
The numbers come after mass firings of thousands of federal employees by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Friday’s data indicated that federal government employment declined by 9,000 in April and by 26,000 since January.
Official data this week indicated the first fall in GDP for three years, but was distorted by a surge in imports ahead of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, with domestic demand remaining strong.
Many economists anticipate that the duties will act as a drag on underlying growth in the second quarter of the year.
This is a developing story
