A largely positive U.S. jobs report sent the stock market soaring as the
Dow Jones industrial average traded above 15,000 for the first time before
closing just below the mark and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index closed
at a record 1,614.
"The Dow was at 14,000 in March. It's more than doubled since early 2009," said
Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight.
"Investors seem to have more confidence," Alan Clayton-Matthews, an associate
professor of economics and public policy at Northeastern University, told the
Herald. "And the Federal Reserve made interest rates so low that if you put your
savings in the bank, it won't earn much. The only place to put (your savings) is
in commodities like gold or equities like stock. It seems like a pretty safe bet
because businesses are doing well and profits are high."
The nation added 165,000 jobs in April, with increases reported in professional
and business services, food services and drinking establishments, retail trade
and health care, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"It's an improvement from what many people were expecting," said Eric Rosengren,
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "I'd still like to see better
improvement than what we've seen to date."
The number of unemployed Americans last month -- 11.7 million, or 7.5 percent of
the work force -- ticked down a tenth of a percent from March and has declined
by 673,000, or 0.4 percent, since January.
Another bright spot: Due to revisions of earlier estimates, employment gains in
February and March combined were 114,000 higher than previously reported,
federal data shows. Also, the number of people not looking for work because they
believe no jobs are available for them decreased by 133,000 from a year earlier
to 835,000 last month.
"Overall, April's job report was consistent with the stubbornly slow pace of
economic growth the nation has been experiencing this year, but with a few
silver linings," said Michael D. Goodman, associate professor and public policy
department chairman at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "These include
strong upward revisions to the February and March data that suggest that the
employment recovery is continuing, albeit not fast enough to be much consolation
for the more than 4 million American workers who have been unemployed for over
26 weeks."
And the jobs people are getting may not be the ones they want. The number of
involuntary part-time workers, for example, increased in April by 278,000 to 7.9
million, largely offsetting a decrease in March.
Ira Kantor contributed to this report.
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