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Washington (AP) - In the US, the labor market figures for April fell far short of expectations.
US President Joe Biden still sees the country's economy on the right track.
"We knew that this would not be a sprint, but a marathon," said Biden on Friday in the White House.
"We're still wriggling out of an economic collapse."
The situation will continue to improve.
The labor market report on Friday also shows that the US still has a long way to go to overcome the crisis triggered by the corona pandemic.
Employment rose significantly less than expected in April: According to the US Department of Labor, only 266,000 new jobs were added outside of agriculture.
Analysts had expected an average of one million jobs to grow.
The unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than in the previous month.
Analysts had assumed a decline to 5.8 percent.
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The labor market data is putting a damper on efforts to put the US economy back on the path to recovery. It was hit hard by the corona pandemic: Employment collapsed at record speed in spring 2020. Since then, the job market has recovered, but there are still many Americans without a job. The "New York Times" spoke on Friday of a "dramatic slowdown" in terms of employment.
Biden said, "To be honest, we're going faster than I thought." However, there are still around eight million fewer jobs on the labor market than before the outbreak of the pandemic. He took the labor market figures as an opportunity to advertise billion dollar plans to improve the infrastructure that will create many well-paid jobs. Biden's proposals require the approval of Congress - and the country is still deeply divided internally.
According to the chairman of the government headquarters' council of economic advisors, Cecilia Rouse, most jobs have been lost because of the pandemic in the leisure and hospitality industries.
There are still 17 percent fewer jobs in the sector than in February 2020. Rouse pointed out in a statement that fluctuations in job growth could occur at any time.
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However, the good labor market figures from March had raised hopes that the successes in the vaccination campaign and the associated resumption of economic activities would have a lasting positive effect on the labor market.
A surprisingly strong increase in employment was reported for March.
The Ministry of Labor has now corrected the number from 916,000 to 770,000 new jobs outside of agriculture.
Nevertheless, economists see reason for hope.
The sharp decline in new applications for unemployment benefits, the current infection rate and the expectation that even more people will soon be vaccinated, indicated that employment in May and June will be "much stronger", wrote the chief economist of the management consultancy Grant Thornton , Diane Swonk, on Twitter.
More than 250 million vaccinations have been given in the United States since the corona vaccination campaign began in mid-December.
32.8 percent of the population are now fully vaccinated.
The number of new infections detected every day averaged just over 47,500 over the past seven days.
For comparison: a month ago the seven-day average was around 63,500.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210507-99-511773 / 2
Communication from Cecilia Rouse
Twitter thread Diane Swonk