On the surface today's jobs report was very strong: headline payrolls came in nearly double the expected (115K vs 65K), with unemployment flat just so Trump's chief economist Kevin Hassett could push bullish taking points in today's TV circuit such as this one.

Unfortunately, below the surface this was the ugliest jobs report in years, and one could say even more cooked than last month's laughable surge in jobs (which was revised from 178K to 185K).

First, while the Establishment survey showed an impressive 115K jump in jobs when virtually everyone was expecting a big drop, looking at the composition reveals two things: the biggest contributor wassemi-governmentjobs from the Education and Health services category which added 46K, and has been the biggest, and only consistent source of jobs growth this decade.

But even more remarkable was the surge in courier and messenger jobs, which soared by 38K in April, reversing the 52K drop last month. Was there a Doordash or Uber hiring binge that we missed last month? We thought they were mostly laying off their thousands of illegal alien workers...

In other words, just two job categories accounted for almost all the job gains in April. As for the beating heart of the US economy, manufacturing jobs,they tumbled to -2,000after surging 15,000 in March, the first negative print of 2026. Manufacturing jobs are now down 73K over the past year. Chemicals, Wood, and Machinery manufacturing are the biggest losers, but few subsectors are doing well

But what is even more concerning, is that the entire base of the monthly print was put in doubt after the BLS reported that in April, the Birth/Death adjustment "added" 391K jobs, which as we have explained repeatedly are not actual jobs but a baseline for model assumptions what the number of jobs in a given month "should" be. One would think after all the huge negative revisions to jobs under Biden as a result of flawed BIrth/Death assumptions the BLS would have learned its lesson. One would be wrong.

But stepping away from the Establishment survey, things are even uglier in the much more accurate Household Survey. It is here that we find that contrary to the abovementioned payrolls increase, the number of employed workersactually declined by 226K in April. Worse, this wasn't a one off: as shown below, the number of employed workers has been declining every month this year,and is now down an average of 343K jobs every month of 2026after hitting a record high in Dec 2025!

Unfortunately, this means that we are once again witnessing the infamous divergence between the Household And Establishment surveys,as the number of employed workers has been declining and is now the lowest since December 2024 ot 162.622 million,the number of payrolls (tracked by the Establishment survey) is now at an all time high of 158.735 million, a number which is clearly not supported by the data.

This divergence is also why the unemployment rate remained at 4.3%: even though employment shrank by 226K to 162.622 million, the unemployment rate did not rise because people left the labor force.

There was more rot under the surface, as the number offull-time jobs in April plunged by 424K, while part-time jobs surged by 123K.

Source: ZeroHedge News