April hiring topped a soft forecast, but the rest of the report told a less rosy story.
The labor force shrank again, wage growth came in soft, and one corner of the economy kept losing jobs. That corner is the part most exposed to AI.
Employers added 115,000 jobs last month, well ahead of the 55,000 forecast. That print was a step down from March's unusually strong 185,000.
The unemployment rate held at 4.3% for another month. Wage growth came in soft alongside it, with hourly earnings up 0.2% on the month and 3.6% on the year, both a tick under estimates.
Healthcare led the gains with 37,000 new jobs, followed by transportation at 30,000, retail at 22,000, and social assistance at 17,000.
Stocks opened slightly higher and Treasury yields dropped after the report, with traders reading the data as solid but not strong enough to shift the Fed's path.
Information services lost another 13,000 jobs in April, extending a slide that started about three years ago. The category covers software, publishing, telecom, and data processing roles.
Since November 2022, the sector has shed 342,000 jobs, roughly 11% of its workforce. That start date matters because ChatGPT launched the same month, and white-collar tech hiring has been shrinking ever since.
Inside the household survey, the labor force participation rate fell to 61.8%, the lowest since October 2021, and part-time work for economic reasons jumped 445,000 to 4.9 million.
Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed, told CNBC the labor market has been "stable without being good" for the past year and a half.
This report lands at a tense moment for the Federal Reserve, which voted 8-4 last week to keep its benchmark interest rate where it is.
That was the most "no" votes since 1992, with some officials thinking the next move could be a cut and others arguing for a hike. Markets aren't pricing either before year-end.
A new Fed chair is also on deck, with former Governor Kevin Warsh awaiting Senate confirmation.
Dan North, senior economist at Allianz, told CNBC he was looking through the report for problems and called it "fairly bulletproof this month."
One month doesn't make a trend, and revisions are still telling an uneven story, with February's job loss revised down again to 156,000.
Job creation is enough to keep the unemployment rate flat. It isn't enough to pull anyone off the sidelines.
