LinkUp Forecasting a Net Gain of 50,000 Jobs in April As Labor Demand & Job Growth Remain Anemic

Job Vacancies in April in the U.S. dropped 2.5% From March to 4.1M, 8% below where they stood in April of last year - precisely the average monthly YoY decline seen for the past 12 months.

For better or worse, neither of the two primary areas of focus for this blog - labor demand data and material to weigh in on regarding the job market, the economy, and everything happening everywhere all at once - are presently suffering from a negative supply shock.

In fact, quite the opposite - so much so that I am splitting our non-farm payroll forecast into two parts with the first one, below, being our job market data for April along with our NFP forecast for April (a net gain of 50,000 jobs) and the second, in a post to follow, with our general commentary. So first the data and our forecast.

In April, total job vacancies indexed from employers globally declined 2.5% while new job vacancies fell 4.1%.

Total job vacancies dropped in 5 states (AK, ID, MT, RI, SC) as did new openings (UT, AL, SC, AK, RI).

Labor demand was flat in manufacturing and fell in services, and declined in both blue and white collar occupations.

By industry, labor demand was flat or down in 16 of 24 sectors and flat or down in 19 of 24 occupation categories

For the week ending May 2nd, total unique job vacancies in the U.S. scraped daily directly from employer websites globally declines 0.4% to just under 3 million.

Based on our labor demand data, we are forecasting a net gain of 50,000 jobs in April, a bit below the consensus estimate of a gain of 75,000 jobs.

Part II with our general commentary to follow.