The April jobs report will be released Friday morning, and it is expected to show a resilient U.S. labor market even in the face of a global energy shock triggered by the U.S. war with Iran.
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After a strong March report showed 178,000 positions added nationwide, economists polled by Dow Jones expect Friday’s report will show another 55,000 roles added in April and a steady unemployment rate of at 4.3%.
The Dow Jones-surveyed economists also expect to see average hourly earnings tick up from a 3.5% annual rate in March to 3.8% in April.
But the labor market has experienced volatility in recent months, and at least three of the last five jobs reports showed contractions in hiring.
Some Wall Street analysts predict there will be a net loss of jobs, not a gain.
Economists at Citigroup expect a loss of 15,000 jobs in Friday’s report, which will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET.
“Hiring rates remain subdued but … enough to keep the unemployment rate stable in recent months,” Andrew Hollenhorst, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup, wrote in a note Thursday.
Over the past several years, a pattern has emerged, he noted, with “a period of stronger labor market data to start the year followed by weaker data in the spring and summer.”
But analysts at Bank of America took the opposite view, writing this week that they expect “another strong month in the labor market.”
In a client note Tuesday, they projected that the government jobs data would reveal that 80,000 positions were added last month.
As for which industries those new jobs were likely to be concentrated in, the Bank of America team expected little to no change from the past year.
“Education and health will continue to lead job gains” in April’s report, they wrote. Part of the reason is that healthcare and eldercare jobs can’t be easily replaced by AI. Another contributing factor to the boom in home and personal care jobs is demographics — the number of older Americans is surging as members of the Baby Boom generation move into their 70s.
Another factor that could be reflected Friday is the recent spell of warm weather, they wrote, traditionally a boon for the leisure and hospitality, construction and transportation sectors.
The report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics will arrive as oil prices remain higher by more than 50% since the start of the year and average retail gas prices hover above $4.55 per gallon, up 50% since the war with Iran started in late February.
A slowing job market would be bad news for consumers just as those higher energy prices pile on to monthly expenses.
“Higher gasoline prices are stretching household budgets, with the greatest impact on lower-income consumers,” the Bank of America Institute reported in a research paper at the end of April.
“In March 2026, the median lower-income household spent 4.2% of their income on gasoline, up from 3.9% a year earlier and above 2019 levels,” the report found.
In March, the consumer price index rose sharply to 3.3%, up 0.9% from February, pushing the pace of wage gains closer to falling below the rate of inflation.
But, given the “choppiness” in recent jobs data, J.P. Morgan chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli wrote in a note to clients, “even a moderately negative reading wouldn’t phase us.”
Some Federal Reserve officials also appear unfazed by the choppiness in the labor market data.
In a speech Wednesday, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said economic risks the central bank is tasked with balancing have “been shifting towards more risk on the inflation side than the employment side.”
But, he cautioned, there’s “a lot of uncertainty right now, and it’s important to see how things settle.”
