Newspaper Page Text
Page 12 - Wednesday, May 8, 2024
The Jenkins County Times
jenkinscountytimes.com
AUDITIONS
ANNOUNCED
SATURDAY
May 18th
9 :00 a.m.
to 3:00 p.m.
To Pre Schedule
An Audition &
For an
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Children: Ages 6 -16 Call:
Adults: Ages 17 & up 912.451.6397
125 North Main Street
The Times Building
Downtown Sylvania
Pianist Provided - Song
from Musical must be sung
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Singers
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Produced by:
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j River Theatre Company
Employment Scaled Back in
Aprd, Feds Could Cut Rates
-Special to The Times
The nation’s employers pulled
back on their hiring in April but
still added a decent 175,000 jobs
in a sign that persistently high
interest rates may be starting to
slow the robust U.S. job market.
Friday’s government report
showed that last month’s niring
g,ain was down sharply from
the blockbuster increase of
315,000 in March. And it was
well below the 233,000 gain that
economists had predicted for
April.
Yet the moderation in the
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pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be
welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has kept interest rates at a two-decade
high to fight persistently elevated inflation. Hourly wages rose a less-than-expected
0.2% from March and 3.9% from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since June
aving any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains
iflatioi
2021.
The Fed has been delay ^
more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its 2% target. Rate cuts
by the central bank would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and
other consumer and business borrowing.
“A slowdown in payrolls to a decent pace to start the second quarter, coupled with
a slowing in wage gains, will be welcome news to (the Fed’s) policymakers,” said
RubeelaFarooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency,Economics. “Current
readings also support the view that rates cuts - and not hikes - are the base case
scenario for the Fed this year.”
The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November
presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market,
Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign
blame to President Joe Biden.
Even with the April hiring slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a
eep hiring, tc
Though the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.8% to 3.9% in April, it was the
27th straight month in which the rate has remained below 4%, tying the longest
such streak since the 1960s.
“Certainly, a cooler jobs report than we’ve seen,’ said Michael Pugliese, senior
economist at Wells Fargo. “But it’s not like it was disastrous: 175,000 is still pretty
strong, and unemployment below 4% is still pretty healthy.” He expects hiring,
which averaged a vigorous 242,000 from February through April, to continue to
decelerate.
Last month’s hiring was led by healthcare companies, which added 56,000 jobs.
Warehouse and transportation companies addea22,ooo and retailers 20,000.
Government at all levels, which had been hiring aggressively, added just 8,000 jobs
in April, the lowest monthly total since December 2022.
Local governments didn’t add any jobs at all last month. Paul Ashworth of Capital
Economics noted that state and local government revenue has recently slumped.
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