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                          Statement of

                        Erica L. Groshen
                          Commissioner
                   Bureau of Labor Statistics

                      Friday, May 6, 2016


      Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 160,000 in April, and 
the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent. Job gains 
occurred in professional and business services, health care, and 
financial activities, while mining employment continued to 
decline.

      Incorporating revisions for February and March, which 
reduced nonfarm payroll employment by 19,000, monthly job gains 
have averaged 200,000 over the past 3 months. In the 12 months 
prior to April, employment growth averaged 232,000 per month. 

      Employment in professional and business services rose by 
65,000 in April, with a large job gain in management and 
technical consulting services (+21,000). Professional and 
business services employment has risen by 611,000 over the year.

      Health care employment continued to grow, with an increase 
of 44,000 in April. Hospitals added 23,000 jobs over the month, 
and ambulatory health care services added 19,000 jobs. 
Employment in health care increased by 502,000 over the year.

      Financial activities employment rose by 20,000 in April. 
Credit intermediation and related activities added 8,000 jobs 
over the month. Employment in financial activities increased by 
160,000 over the year.

      In April, employment changed little in retail trade
(-3,000). Monthly job growth averaged 53,000 over the prior 3 
months.  

      Employment in construction was essentially unchanged in 
April (+1,000), after rising by 41,000 in March. The average 
gain over the 2 months is in line with recent job growth in the 
industry.  

      Manufacturing employment changed little in April (+4,000), 
after losing 45,000 jobs over the prior 2 months.

      Mining employment continued to decline in April (-7,000). 
The industry has lost 191,000 jobs since a recent peak in 
September 2014. More than three-fourths of the job losses over 
this period have been in support activities for mining.

      Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 
payrolls rose by 8 cents in April to $25.53. Over the past 12 
months, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.5 percent. From 
March 2015 to March 2016, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban 
Consumers (CPI-U) increased by 0.9 percent (on a seasonally 
adjusted basis).

      Turning now to data from our survey of households, there 
were 7.9 million unemployed persons in April, and the 
unemployment rate remained at 5.0 percent. There has been little 
change in either measure since August. The number of long-term 
unemployed--those who had been looking for work for 27 weeks or 
more--declined to 2.1 million over the month. These individuals 
accounted for 25.7 percent of the unemployed.

      The labor force participation rate declined to 62.8 percent 
in April, and the employment-population ratio edged down to 59.7 
percent. 

      Among the employed, the number working part time for 
economic reasons, also referred to as involuntary part-time 
workers, was 6.0 million in April. This measure has shown little 
movement since November. (Involuntary part-time workers are 
those who would have preferred full-time employment but were 
working part time because their hours had been cut back or 
because they were unable to find full-time work.)

      Among people who were neither working nor looking for work 
in April, 1.7 million were classified as marginally attached to 
the labor force, down by 400,000 from a year earlier. The number 
of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who 
believed that no jobs were available for them, was 568,000 in 
April, down by 188,000 from a year earlier. (The marginally 
attached are individuals who had not looked for work in the 4 
weeks prior to the survey but wanted a job, were available for 
work, and had looked for a job within the last 12 months.)

      In summary, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 160,000 in 
April, and the unemployment rate held at 5.0 percent.