There are several items in focus this morning including Warren Buffett's big meeting (as well as his take on both IBM and apple), the election in France on Sunday (Macron continues to hold a 20-point lead – but strange things have been happening at voting booths around the world lately), the latest move in oil (don't look now, but oil was trading below $44 this morning based on supply concerns – and remains something to watch), and of course, the Big Kahuna of economic data – the Jobs Report.
The latter is attracting most of the attention at the moment as job creation in April rebounded from the surprisingly weak March reading. According to the Labor Department, the U.S. economy created 211,000 jobs last month, which was above the consensus expectation for 185,000.
Next, the nation's official Unemployment Rate fell to 4.4%, which was down from March's reading of 4.5% and two-tenths below analysts expectations of 4.6%. It is worth noting that the current level is the lowest seen since May 2007.
However, there are numerous ways to look at the rate of the unemployed. For example, there is the now-popular U-6 rate, which includes those not actively looking for jobs and folks looking for part-time work. The U-6 dropped to 8.6% in April, which is down from the 8.9% level in March, and the best reading since November 2007.
Another way to view unemployment is to take the number of employed people relative to the population. This ratio rose to 60.2% in April, which is the highest level seen since February 2009.
As usual, there were revisions to the prior two months' job creation totals. March was revised down to 79K from 98K while February's numbers went up to 232K from 219K.
On the income front, Average Hourly Earnings rose by 0.3% in April to $26.19 per hour and hourly wages grew by 2.5% on a year-over-year basis.
The Takeaway
What jumps out at me in this report is the “best reading since” numbers. For example, the Unemployment Rate is the best since May 2007. The U-6 is the best since November 2007. And the ratio of employed-to-population is the highest since February 2009.
