Jobless rate under 4%, first since 2000

WASHINGTON — The U.S. labor market improved somewhat last month, adding a solid 164,000 net jobs while the unemployment rate reached a new milestone, falling below 4 percent for the first time since 2000, the Labor Department said Friday.

But while job growth rebounded from a disappointing March figure, revised up Friday to 135,000, other aspects of the closely watched monthly report were lackluster.

And the drop in the unemployment rate was for a bad reason: The labor force shrank for the second month in a row.

Overall, the data show a labor market that remains resilient in the face of a potential global trade war, but whose growth is slowing as the recovery from the Great Recession this month became the second-longest in U.S. history.

“This jobs report is truly a mixed bag,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at financial information website Bankrate.com.

The April job gains were below analyst expectations of about 195,000.

But with upward revisions of 30,000 for February and March, job growth has averaged 200,000 a month this year — well above what’s needed to accommodate new entrants to the workforce

The 3.9 percent unemployment rate in April set a new post-recession low.

The unemployment rates for blacks and Latinos last month — 6.6 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively — were at their lowest levels since the Labor Department began tracking the figures in the early 1970s.

President Donald Trump touted the decline in the overall rate Friday.

“I thought the jobs report was very good. The big thing to me was cracking 4 (percent). That hasn’t been done in a long time,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House for a speech in Texas. “We’re (at) full employment. We’re doing great.”

But the reason the unemployment rate dropped from 4.1 percent in March was because the labor force