The U.S. jobs report for April was released Friday, showing that the American economy added 165,000 jobs last month, causing the unemployment rate to drop to a four-year-low of 7.5 percent. March's numbers were also readjusted from 88,000 jobs to 138,000. 

 

Unlike other recent jobs reports, the household survey shows that the number of employed Americans rose by 293,000, meaning that the unemployment drop occurred because people have been finding work instead of dropping out of the job search. The number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits also dropped.

 

Wall Street reacted strongly to the report, as the Dow Jones and S&P 500 rose above 15,000 and 1,600 respectively for the first time ever.

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Still, some economists are warning that the report does not quell some major concerns.  ABC News reports that despite the rise in employed Americans, the percentage of Americans above age 16 that are either working or looking for a job is 63.3, the lowest since 1979. The Economist's Greg Ip warns that while the report shows that the job market is resilient, it is still below the six month average of 208,000 and does not show any sign that the economy will be able to improve its sluggish growth anytime soon unless the government finds a way to avoid the budget sequester cuts that are already doing damage to economic growth.  

 

The economy’s recent hiccup was not some statistical artifact of the March employment report: it has showed up in retail sales, industrial production, and housing starts, and has continued into April with automobile sales and manufacturing activity. Moreover, the slowdown is global, with manufacturing activity stalling even in former stalwarts like China and Germany.

There is little reason to expect the economy to accelerate in the near term. Barack Obama desperately wants to scrap the sequester, but unless congressmen heard a groundswell of protest in their districts during this week’s recess, they are unlikely to return to Washington motivated to fix it.

 

On Friday, the Obama administration announced that $5 billion of the #85 billion sequester budget cuts can be restored, providing $4 billion for the Pentagon and $1 billion for Homeland Security and NASA. 

 

Read the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here

Reach Executive Producer Jeremy Fuster here or follow him on Twitter