The April Jobs Report Looks Okay on the Surface, But the Part-Time Spike Is the Number to Watch
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Healthcare led all sectors with 37,000 jobs, right in line with its 12-month average of 32,000, gains concentrated in nursing and residential care (+15,000) and home health care (+11,000). Transportation and warehousing added 30,000, almost entirely from couriers and messengers (+38,000), though the sector remains down 105,000 jobs since its February 2025 peak. Retail added 22,000, driven by warehouse clubs and supercenters (+18,000) and building material dealers (+13,000). Department stores shed another 7,000. Social assistance continued trending up (+17,000), and federal government employment fell by another 9,000. Since October 2024, federal employment is down 348,000, a reduction of 11.5%. The information sector lost another 13,000 jobs, bringing its total decline to 342,000 (11.0%) since its November 2022 peak.
Strip out healthcare and couriers, and the picture of where job growth is actually broadening gets thin fast. Construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, financial activities, professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality all showed little change. That context matters for employers planning headcount; the labor market is still moving, but its engine is concentrated in a few sectors.
The number that stands out most is from the household survey. The count of people employed part-time for economic reasons (workers who want full-time jobs but had hours cut or couldn’t find one) jumped 445,000 in a single month to 4.9 million. That kind of spike in a single month typically signals employers are managing payroll pressure by cutting hours rather than cutting heads. Short-term unemployment (less than five weeks) also rose by 358,000 to 2.5 million. Neither figure alone rewrites the labor market story, but both point toward softening beneath the headline.
Wages held up: average hourly earnings rose 3.6% year-over-year to $37.41, with the average workweek edging up slightly to 34.3 hours. On revisions, February was revised down from -133,000 to -156,000, and March was revised up from +178,000 to +185,000. Net: 16,000 fewer jobs than previously reported across the two months. The May jobs report releases June 5.
Cloudflare Just Cut 20% of Its Workforce. It Was the Company’s First Mass Layoff in 16 Years.
Cloudflare announced Thursday evening, alongside a strong Q1 earnings beat, that it is cutting more than 1,100 employees, roughly 20% of its approximately 5,500-person workforce. CEO Matthew Prince and co-founder Michelle Zatlyn wrote in a joint message to employees that the decision is “not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance” but a structural reimagining of how Cloudflare operates in what they called “the agentic AI era.”
The reasoning is specific and worth reading carefully. Cloudflare’s own internal AI usage increased more than 600% in the past three months. Employees across engineering, HR, finance, and marketing now run thousands of AI agent sessions daily. Prince described a tipping point in November 2025 when team members began showing productivity gains; some two times, some ten times, some a hundred times more productive than before. The support roles that existed to serve those functions, he said, are no longer the roles companies need going forward. This is the first mass layoff in Cloudflare’s 16-year history.
The financial context makes it harder to dismiss this as a distress response. Q1 revenue came in at $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and a record high. The company beat both revenue and earnings estimates. Shares initially rose 3.3% in after-hours trading before dropping roughly 19% when the layoff announcement followed the earnings beat, closing Friday down about 24% on the day. The pattern we’ve been tracking all week: profitable, growing companies cutting significant headcount not because of financial distress but because AI changed the internal productivity math is here again, and this time at a company that builds the infrastructure the internet runs on.
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Small Businesses Are Still Trying to Hire. They Still Can’t Find the People.
While the headline narrative of May 8 is AI-driven tech layoffs, the NFIB’s April Jobs Report tells the persistent other story. The Small Business Employment Index fell 1.2 points to 100.4, its second consecutive decline and now below the 2025 average of 101.2. The cooling is real, but the talent shortage hasn’t followed.
34% of small business owners reported unfilled job openings in April, up 2 points from March and the highest reading since June 2025. That figure remains well above the historical average of 24%. Of the 53% of owners who were hiring or trying to hire, 87% said they found few or no qualified applicants. Labor quality jumped to 18% as the single most important business problem, up 3 points from March and above the historical average of 12%. As NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg put it: “A lack of qualified applicants has been a major hurdle for Main Street, and employers are struggling to fill open positions.”
That’s the tension the BLS jobs report and the NFIB report together describe. The economy is technically adding jobs. Small businesses are actively trying to hire. But the match between what employers need and who’s available remains broken. There are openings. There are job seekers. They aren’t lining up. That skills mismatch has been the defining friction in the small business labor market for years, and the April data shows it’s getting worse, not better. For anyone actively searching, specific and verifiable skills remain the competitive advantage; the employers are there, and they’re ready to move.
Frequently Asked Questions
The BLS reported 115,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added in April, with unemployment unchanged at 4.3%. Health care (+37,000), transportation and warehousing (+30,000), and retail trade (+22,000) led gains. The federal government shed another 9,000, extending a decline that now totals 348,000 since October 2024.
The count of workers employed part-time for economic reasons jumped 445,000 to 4.9 million, people who want full-time work but had hours cut or couldn’t find a full-time position. A single-month move of that size typically signals employers managing payroll pressure by reducing hours rather than cutting headcount outright.
Cloudflare’s internal AI usage rose more than 600% in three months, reducing the need for support roles across the company. CEO Matthew Prince tied the 1,100 cuts directly to that productivity shift, not financial distress. Q1 revenue hit a record $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year.
Skills mismatch, not a lack of openings. NFIB’s April report found 87% of hiring small business owners found few or no qualified applicants, and 34% had unfilled positions, well above the 24% historical average. Labor quality ranked as the top business problem for 18% of owners, above its 12% historical norm.
