Hotter-Than-Expected Nonfarm Payrolls for April

On this final trading day of the latest Jobs Week, a fresh Employment Situation Report has hit the tape from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the month of April. What we see is a headline +177K new jobs filled last month, above the +133K analysts had expected. The Unemployment Rate remained at +4.2%, as anticipated.

While this is a good headline number, with considerably more jobs than needed to make up a wide swath of new retirees (roughly 100K per month), we also see some downward revisions for the previous two months: March’s initial +228K reported a month ago have been revised down to +185K this morning. February’s BLS headline was originally +151K, but this has now come down to +117K.

Hourly Wages cooled a bit, to +0.2% from +0.3% expected and reported a month ago. To find a lower number for wage growth, we’d have to travel back to August of 2023. Year over year, Hourly Wages grew +3.8%, in-line with last month’s tally and down 10 basis points (bps) from estimates. The Average Workweek grew 10 bps to 34.3 hours in April. Labor Force Participation reached 62.6%, equaling the highs of September last year.

Federal agencies only shed -9K jobs last month; many of the DOGE layoffs throughout the past couple months included employment that came with severance packages. In other words, this figure is lower than may have been expected, but there’s a reason for it. Education & Health Services led the way by segment at +70K, followed by +29K in Transportation & Warehousing and +24K at Leisure & Hospitality.

In short, this is a very good report considering the vast amount of uncertainty regarding trade/tariff policy and new culture of job layoffs. The labor market — and the economy in general — continues to show resiliency, and pre-market indexes are showing their appreciation: the Dow is +425 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is +60 and the Nasdaq +215 points.

Q1 Earnings at a Glance: Big Oil & More

This morning, Q1 earnings season rolls along with three of the top Big Oil companies in the world reporting earnings. ExxonMobil XOM posted a 4-cent beat to $1.76 per share while missing on its top line. Chevron CVX posted a 3-cent beat to $2.18 per share while missing on revenue estimates by -2%. Shell SHEL, on the other hand, posted a strong +19.5% earnings beat ahead of today’s open.

Wendy’s WEN posted earnings of 20 cents per share this morning — exactly in-line with estimates. Revenues of $523.47 million in the quarter missed the Zacks consensus by a smidge. Shares had been trading down -23% year to date, but are up on this strong pre-market morning.

One of the strongest earnings reports out this morning comes from financial services provider Piper Sandler PIPR, which posted a +69% positive earnings surprise to $4.09 per share, on revenues of $383 million which outperformed the Zacks consensus by +7.8%. Shares are up +3.8% on the news this morning, but are still down -15% year to date.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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