April Employement Situation 2008

--Nofarm employment shed another 20k jobs after losing 81k in March. US economy is losing jobs but at a decreasing pace --the main driver is professional and business service sectors (5% of jobs). It snapped the 3-month losing streak and gained 39k jobs in April. It coincides with recent positive earnings release from IT companies, such as Google and IBM. --Education and health (5% of private jobs) continued is momentom, reflecting the greater demand of healthcare services from baby boomers --one negative: the average working hour dropped from 33.7 from 33.8. Factory overtime decreased from 4.0 to 3.9, reflecting further weakending manfuacturing activity. --At the same time, private nonfarm payrolls edged up 1 cent from 17.87 to 17.88, stoking inflation fear.