On to the jobs part of the jobs report, The Skeptical Speculator brings on the basics, from Reuters:
U.S. employers added 138,000 jobs in April, far fewer than had been expected...
It revised March job growth down to 200,000 from 211,000 originally estimated and February down to 200,000 from 225,000.
The unemployment rate was unchanged from March at 4.7 percent...
As to the sources of jobs gains, the pattern by employment type looked fairly comparable to that of last year with a bit taken off the top...
... the obvious exceptions being a hot-looking manufacturing and a very chilly-looking retail sector. What to make of it? BizzyBlog says...
Overall — I’ll take it, but repeat performances are not welcome.
... and that sounds OK to me. But for Barry Ritholtz's taste, the economic porridge is not just right:
Quite bluntly, we simply do not see the Goldilocks scenario -- strong GDP, modest employment improvement, well contained inflation -- as supported by the data.
Shucks.