For students graduating from college right now, the job market is still fairly strong, but there is more uncertainty compared to just a few months ago.
America’s employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.
The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The jobless rate fell in part, though, because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed.
“It’s still a good time to be entering the economy as a job seeker,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst with the financial services company Bankrate. “We still have an elevated number of job openings in this country, which is 1.6 job openings for every unemployed individual.”
In its recent report on jobs, the government noted that while hiring was solid in April, it was much weaker in February and March than it had previously estimated. Job gains for those months were downgraded by a combined 149,000. And hourly wages rose last month at the fastest pace since July, which may alarm the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.
Job growth was particularly strong last month among health care companies, restaurants and bars and a broad category that includes managers, administrators and technical support workers.
“There’s still a lot of demand for people in the leisure and hospitality space that includes bars and restaurants,” Hamrick said. “That is one sector where there’s still a gap of a couple hundred thousand workers compared to where we were before the pandemic.”
Looked at broadly, the nation’s job market appears to be easing into a more moderate phase, roughly akin to the pace of hiring that preceded the pandemic recession of 2020. Job gains for February through April marked the weakest three-month average since January 2021 yet still slightly exceeded the pre-pandemic pace.
“Certain sectors are going to have less demand for new workers than they would have had in the past,” Hamrick said.
The technology sector, for example, has been seeing some of the largest job loss numbers in the economy currently.
Hamrick said, however, that “ultimately that demand for workers will return.”
“We’re living at a time of remarkable innovation and rapid change in the economy,” Hamrick said. “It’s true for college graduates as it is for more senior workers that they need to be agile and prepared to adapt to change.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
