April's Jobs Day is Friday. The labor market is stabilizing, but higher energy prices are eating into paychecks — and a new Fed Chair will soon have to make sense of both. There have been encouraging signs in the labor market leading up to Jobs Day. Job creation: Though monthly payrolls have swung up and down (dashed line in the chart) since the summer of 2025, the average pace has picked up. In the four months ending in March 2026, monthly job creation averaged nearly 50,000 (the solid line). While historically modest, it is the strongest four-month pace in almost a year. The consensus forecast for April payrolls of ... (full story)