Last month, the US labor market only added 266,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate rose slightly to 6.1%. This marked an unexpected slowdown in job creation in the world’s largest economy.

April’s data is down compared to the 770,000 new jobs created in March-down compared to April’s data Previous estimate -It also shows that the US labor market has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels. Compared with February 2020, the workload of Americans decreased by 8.2 million in April.

Compared with economists’ expectation that the US economy will create nearly 1 million jobs last month, the report is disappointing. The leisure and hospitality industry added 331,000 jobs, but other sectors of the economy also suffered losses, including auto manufacturing, temporary assistance and retail.

“We know this will not be a sprint, but a marathon. Frankly speaking, our actions are much faster than I thought.” US President Joe Biden said after the report on Friday. “The climb is steep and we still have a long way to go.”

These figures were released at a time when policymakers and economists had heated debates about the extent to which the U.S. rebound would trigger inflation.

Biden administration officials and senior Federal Reserve officials believe that consumer price increases will be short-lived, but some economists and investors worry that the US economy will overheat in a dangerous way. The slowdown in job creation may alleviate these concerns. However, the data may raise new concerns that labor shortages are hindering recovery.

The downturn in job creation may alleviate the pressure on the Federal Reserve to conduct deliberations on the first step of accelerating the withdrawal of its monetary support for economic recovery.

Michael Pearce, a senior US economist at Capital Economics, said: “Most other evidence suggests that economic activity is picking up quickly, but this is a clear reminder that the recovery in the labor market is lagging behind the rebound in consumption.”

For the Fed, we suspect that this means that it will take several months to judge that the economy has made “substantial further progress” towards the “broad-based and inclusive” full employment goal. This means anything about lightening up, let alone raising interest rates,” he added.

The data will make it harder for the White House to claim its initial $1.9tn stimulation The bill is proceeding as planned, although it can prove its insistence on the long-term need for financial support.

The Biden administration hopes that Congress will take broader fiscal actions and plans to increase spending on U.S. infrastructure and social safety nets by a total of 410 billion U.S. dollars in the next ten years. Higher taxes On the wealthy and large American companies.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (Janet Yellen), who made her first appearance at a White House press conference on Friday, said she still expects a “strong and prosperous economy” in 2021 and 2022.

“I believe we will get full employment next year. But today’s figures also show that as our economy continues to be healthy, we are not done yet. It is important to consider the ways in which we can rebuild better. One way is to eliminate improvements. Obstacles to labor market participation,” she said.

Despite this, Republicans have seized on the slowdown in job creation, proving that even when vaccinations and a new round of stimulus checks have benefited many families, the president’s policies have not rebounded quickly.

Steve Scalise, a senior Republican in the House of Representatives, said: “The “Biden burden” on our economy has begun to have a devastating effect on hard-working families.

Many Republicans and business groups said that in Biden’s stimulus policy, the federal unemployment benefits were too generous, set at $300 a week, and they are curbing recruitment by reducing job incentives. Biden tried to dismiss these demands on Friday, saying that “there is no measurable” suggestion that this is happening.

Yellen said she does not believe that unemployment benefits are the “main factor” in the slowdown in job creation. She said that if this is true, it will happen in states where benefits have replaced most of the wages, and the “just the opposite” is happening.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which is inversely proportional to the price, fell to 1.48%, 0.1 percentage point below Thursday’s high, and then rebounded to more than 1.57%. The yield on the two-year Treasury bond briefly fell to its lowest level since March, and then rebounded to 0.14%.

The stock market rose, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index hit a new high after rising 0.7% that day. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9%, and growth stocks in this market are highly sensitive to changes in interest rates.

On Friday, the implied interest rate of the U.S. dollar against the U.S. dollar (a measure of market expectations of interest rate policy) also fell, indicating that the Fed may not raise interest rates as quickly as investors had previously thought. The U.S. dollar’s exchange rate against a basket of currencies fell to its lowest level since February.

Thomas Simons, an economist at Jefferies, said: “This weakness is completely confusing.” “So far, there is no indication that we will see a weak number.”

But economists Kathy Bostjancic and Gregory Daco of the Oxford School of Economics believe that this is just “breathing.”

They said: “We expect that as the economy adds 8 million jobs this year, the unemployment rate will accelerate significantly, and the unemployment rate will drop to 4.3% by the end of the year.”

Other reports by Aziza Kasumov in New York