A poet once wrote "April is the cruelest month". For talent acquisition teams and their organizations, this feels accurate. While job gains are no longer at their half-million plus per month rate of the first quarter, they remain quite strong: non-farm payrolls increased 428,000 in April, matching the prior month, a Labor Department report showed Friday. The unemployment rate held at 3.6%. The job gains exceeded expectations. A Bloomberg survey of economists had called for a 380,000 advance in payrolls for April.

The economy now has added more than 400,000 jobs a month for 12 months, the longest such streak on record.

Unfortunately, along with the unexpected additional job gains, the participation rate fell unexpectedly, meaning there are even fewer available workers than expected. The number of people working or looking for jobs fell by 363,000 last month, pushing the labor force participation rate from 62.4% to 62%. The size of the labor force, meanwhile, shrank in April for the first time in seven months in a sign of how difficult it is for companies to find workers.

The drop came despite a record 11.5 million job openings in March, underscoring that firms are still struggling to find workers.

The quits rate is also at a historic high as empowered employees feel more surety in seeking new employment.

‍