Sorry, but today’s jobs report sucked. Here’s what you need to know

Don’t break out that champagne quite yet.

The United States economy saw only 266,000 jobs added last month, according to the April jobs report that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released this morning.

That number is far below the 1 million new jobs experts were anticipating.

The industry with the biggest employment gains in April was leisure and hospitality, which saw an increase of 331,000 jobs, according to the BLS. Fueling that is the slow lifting of COVID-related restrictions that have been in place during the pandemic across the country.

The “other services” sector also saw an increase, up 44,000 jobs, while the local government education sector was up 31,000 jobs.

The unemployment data didn’t inspire much cheering either. The jobless rate changed little; it’s at 6.1% with 9.8 million people out of work. Still, both numbers are “down considerably” from the April 2020 ones, as the pandemic upended life as we knew it. In contrast, February 2020’s unemployment rate was 3.5% with 5.7 million people without jobs.