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 

Erica L. Groshen 

Commissioner 

Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Friday, May 6, 2016

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 160,000 in April, and 

the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent. Job gains 

occurred in professional and business services, health care, and 

financial activities, while mining employment continued to 

decline. 

Incorporating revisions for February and March, which 

reduced nonfarm payroll employment by 19,000, monthly job gains 

have averaged 200,000 over the past 3 months. In the 12 months 

prior to April, employment growth averaged 232,000 per month. 

Employment in professional and business services rose by 

65,000 in April, with a large job gain in management and 

technical consulting services (+21,000). Professional and 

business services employment has risen by 611,000 over the year. 

Health care employment continued to grow, with an increase 

of 44,000 in April. Hospitals added 23,000 jobs over the month, 
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and ambulatory health care services added 19,000 jobs. 

Employment in health care increased by 502,000 over the year. 

Financial activities employment rose by 20,000 in April. 

Credit intermediation and related activities added 8,000 jobs 

over the month. Employment in financial activities increased by 

160,000 over the year. 

In April, employment changed little in retail trade 

(-3,000). Monthly job growth averaged 53,000 over the prior 3 

months. 

Employment in construction was essentially unchanged in 

April (+1,000), after rising by 41,000 in March. The average 

gain over the 2 months is in line with recent job growth in the 

industry. 

Manufacturing employment changed little in April (+4,000), 

after losing 45,000 jobs over the prior 2 months. 

Mining employment continued to decline in April (-7,000). 

The industry has lost 191,000 jobs since a recent peak in 

September 2014. More than three-fourths of the job losses over 

this period have been in support activities for mining. 

Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 

payrolls rose by 8 cents in April to $25.53. Over the past 12 

months, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.5 percent. From 

March 2015 to March 2016, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban 
3 

Consumers (CPI-U) increased by 0.9 percent (on a seasonally 

adjusted basis). 

Turning now to data from our survey of households, there 

were 7.9 million unemployed persons in April, and the 

unemployment rate remained at 5.0 percent. There has been little 

change in either measure since August. The number of long-term 

unemployed—those who had been looking for work for 27 weeks or 

more—declined to 2.1 million over the month. These individuals 

accounted for 25.7 percent of the unemployed. 

The labor force participation rate declined to 62.8 percent 

in April, and the employment-population ratio edged down to 59.7 

percent. 

Among the employed, the number working part time for 

economic reasons, also referred to as involuntary part-time 

workers, was 6.0 million in April. This measure has shown little 

movement since November. (Involuntary part-time workers are 

those who would have preferred full-time employment but were 

working part time because their hours had been cut back or 

because they were unable to find full-time work.) 

Among people who were neither working nor looking for work 

in April, 1.7 million were classified as marginally attached to 

the labor force, down by 400,000 from a year earlier. The number 

of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who 

believed that no jobs were available for them, was 568,000 in 
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April, down by 188,000 from a year earlier. (The marginally 

attached are individuals who 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.) 

In summary, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 160,000 in 

April, and the unemployment rate held at 5.0 percent.