So maybe Fed Chair Powell did get an early look at the jobs report given his dovish leaning press conference on Wednesday. Non-farm payrolls rose 175k in April versus the 240k consensus (ranged between 145k and 280k in the Bloomberg survey) and there were 22k of downward revisions to the past couple of months. The unemployment rate moves up to 3.9% from 3.8% while wage growth was softer than expected at 0.2% month-on-month, bringing the annual rate of growth to 3.9%, the slowest rate since June 2021. Rounding out the key numbers we also see the average work week dropped to 34.3 hours from 34.4. None of this is ... (full story)