Friday's blockbuster jobs report, which blew past analysts' expectations and saw unemployment drop to a 49-year low, wasn't all good news, some economists said.
The U.S. economy added added 263,000 jobs in April as the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since 1969. These numbers were way better than anticipated, and it's undeniably great news for President Trump, who celebrated the report on Twitter.
Still, experts observed that there were some downsides. While unemployment fell, so did the labor force participation rate, which declined 0.2 percentage points to 62.8 percent, which represents a 490,000 person drop, reports CNBC. This measures the percentage of people who are either employed or are actively seeking work.
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For that reason, Michelle Meyer, head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told The New York Times that the drop in unemployment that occurred in April was "for bad reasons." She added that "the lower participation rate is a little bit of a disappointment but it's a volatile number."
Economist Diane Swonk similarly flagged this participation rate reduction as a disappointment while allowing that it could "just be a one-month aberration," while The Wall Street Journal economic commentator Greg Ip said that the report "raises a cautionary note" with this "big decline in the labor force," noting that it's now in the range it was since 2013.
The Times summed it up by writing that the factors behind the low unemployment rate "aren’t as hopeful as the headline number itself." Other experts noted racial discrepancies, and fairly low number of manufacturing jobs added, which one economist told The Washington Post was the "only number you can point that looks disappointing."
