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Jobs Report Stronger Than Expected, Unemployment Rate Falls to 3.6%

U.S. Employers Add 207,000 Jobs In July

The U.S. economy isn't slowing down anytime soon as the April jobs report revealed unemployment has fallen to 3.6 percent - it's lowest level in nearly fifty years.

Solid gains in the professional and business services sector led job creation in April with 76,000 new positions according to data released by the Labor Department Friday.

In total, employers added 263,000 jobs in April, surpassing economists' and Wall Street's expectations of 190,000. The numbers also suggested there was a large drop in the labor-force participation rate, which measures the amount of people 16 and older looking for a job.

"For 14 consecutive months, the unemployment rate has remained at or below 4.0% and this month included widespread good news: the unemployment rate reached record lows for Hispanic-Americans, Americans with disabilities, and Gulf War II veterans, and matched record lows for Asian Americans and all veterans," U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta said in a statement about the numbers.

The number of people who said they were employed or seeking work fell to 62.8 percent from 63 percent in March.

Data from previous months was revised slightly. February's total jobs were increased from a mere 33,000 jobs added to 56,000. March's total was revised downward to 189,000 from 196,000. The number of all unemployed plummeted by 387,000 in April, which brought the total number down to around 5.8 million.

The solid data found in the jobs report demonstrated a U.S. economy that appears to be shrugging off global economic troubles such as Britain's exodus from the EU and the trade war with China.

Average hourly earnings were up 3.2% as compared to last year this time. Company payrolls have risen for 104 quarters in a row, with more than 20 million jobs created since the Great Recession ended in 2009. That's well above the 1.9 percent increase in prices over the last year, which translates into real gains in the average worker's paycheck.

President Donald Trump touted the jobs report in a tweet sent Friday morning.

Photo: Getty Images


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