The employment situation in April 2012

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April. This increase followed a gain of 154,000 in March and gains averaging 252,000 per month for December 2011 to February 2012.

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Employment in professional and business services increased by 62,000 in April. Since a recent low point in September 2009, employment in this industry has grown by 1.5 million.

Retail trade employment rose by 29,000 over the month. General merchandise stores added 21,000 jobs in April but has shown no definitive trend in recent months.

Health care (included in education and health services) continued to add jobs (+19,000) in April. Within the industry, employment in ambulatory health care services, which includes home health care and offices of physicians, rose by 15,000.

Manufacturing employment continued to trend up (+16,000) in April, with job growth in fabricated metal products (+6,000) and machinery (+5,000).

Transportation and warehousing lost 17,000 jobs in April, with employment declines in transit and ground passenger transportation (−11,000) and in couriers and messengers (−7,000).

In April, the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent.

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Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.2 percent in April, not seasonally adjusted.

These data are from the Current Employment Statistics and Current Population Survey programs and are seasonally adjusted. Employment data for the most recent two months are preliminary. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — April 2012," (HTML) (PDF) news release USDL-12-0816. More charts featuring employment data can be found in Current Employment Statistics Highlights: April 2012 (PDF)