The US economy added around 66,400 jobs in April, according to an alternative measure of nonfarm payrolls released on Thursday.
At this juncture — i.e., with the BLS likely to remain open for the foreseeable future — I’m not sure it’s worth documenting the monthly Revelio Labs updates. But for the macro junkies among you, I suppose there’s no such thing as “too much data.”
Recall that the Revelio tally’s derived using individual-level data from more than 100 million online professional profiles. It was nowhere close to the NFP headline in March, but as the figure below reminds you, the two are at least directionally consistent.
The April advance was broad-based, and would’ve shown a much larger overall gain were it not for retail and hospitality, which between them shed nearly 50,000 workers.
I wouldn’t read too much into this release. As noted above, it’s mentionable, but that’s about it. Nobody trades it.
Meanwhile, initial US jobless claims remained very low in the week to May 2, the Labor Department said. The headline filers series printed 200,000 on Thursday, below the 205,000 consensus.
The prior week’s print, which counted as the lowest since 1969, was revised slightly higher to a still rock-bottom 190,000. At just 203,250, the four-week average is the lowest in more than 27 months.
Continuing claims for the week to April 25 slipped to 1.766 million, below estimates and the fewest since January of 2024.
I gotta ask: Are all those laid off tech workers just not filing?
Another perspective on claims is that highly paid tech folks don’t claim when they are laid off because to do so would cause them to be pursued by the unemployment folks to take any job to get them off the rolls of the unemployed. Who knows how many people are actually unemployed without ever filing a claim? My SIL is well into his third year, laid off by his large tech employer after it was acquired by an even larger one.