Advance copies of this statement are made available to the press 

under lock-up conditions with the explicit understanding that 

the data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Statement of 

William J. Wiatrowski 

Acting Commissioner 

Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Friday, May 4, 2018

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 164,000 in April, 

and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.9 percent. Over the 

month, job gains occurred in professional and business services, 

manufacturing, health care, and mining. 

Incorporating revisions for February and March, which 

increased nonfarm payroll employment by 30,000 on net, monthly 

job gains have averaged 208,000 over the past 3 months. 

In April, employment in professional and business services 

increased by 54,000. Over the year, employment in the industry 

has grown by 518,000.

Manufacturing employment rose by 24,000 in April. The gain 

was largely in the durable goods component, with machinery 

adding 8,000 jobs and employment in fabricated metals continuing 

to trend up (+4,000). Over the past 12 months, manufacturing has 
 

2

added 245,000 jobs, with about three-fourths of the growth in 

durable goods industries.

Employment in health care increased by 24,000 in April, 

about in line with its average monthly gain over the prior 12 

months. Within the industry, employment rose over the month in 

both ambulatory health care services (+17,000) and hospitals 

(+8,000). 

Mining employment increased by 8,000 in April, with job 

gains occurring primarily in support activities for mining 

(+7,000). Employment in mining has grown by 86,000 since a 

recent low point in October 2016. 

Employment in other major industries--construction, 

wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, 

information, financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and 

government--showed little change in April.

Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 

payrolls increased by 4 cents in April to $26.84. Over the past 

12 months, average hourly earnings have grown by 2.6 percent. 

From March 2017 to March 2018, the Consumer Price Index for All 

Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased by 2.4 percent (on a 

seasonally adjusted basis). 

Turning to data from the survey of households, the 

unemployment rate edged down to 3.9 percent in April, following 
 

3

6 consecutive months at 4.1 percent. The number of unemployed 

people, at 6.3 million, also edged down over the month.

The number of unemployed people searching for work for 27 

weeks or longer was 1.3 million in April, little changed over 

the month. These long-term unemployed accounted for 20.0 percent 

of the total unemployed. 

Both the labor force participation rate, at 62.8 percent, 

and the employment-population ratio, at 60.3 percent, changed 

little in April.

Among the employed, the number of people working part time 

for economic reasons, also referred to as involuntary part-time 

workers, was 5.0 million in April. This measure was essentially 

unchanged over the month and has held fairly steady since last 

fall. 

Among those neither working nor looking for work in April, 

1.4 million were considered marginally attached to the labor 

force, down by 172,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers, 

a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs 

were available for them, numbered 408,000 in April, little 

different from a year earlier. (People who are marginally 

attached to the labor force had not looked for work in the 4 

weeks prior to the survey but wanted a job, were available for 

work, and had looked for a job within the last 12 months.) 
 

4

In summary, nonfarm payroll employment increased by 164,000 

in April, and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.9 percent.