The US labour market added just 266,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 per cent, marking an unexpected deceleration in job creation in the world’s largest economy.

The April data compared with 770,000 jobs added in March — a downward revision compared to the previous estimate — and showed the US labour market was still well short of pre-pandemic levels. In April, 8.2m fewer Americans were working compared with February 2020.

The jobs numbers for April represented a big disappointment compared with economists’ expectations that the US economy would have created almost 1m positions last month. While leisure and hospitality added 331,000 jobs, there were losses in other sectors of the economy, including car manufacturing, temporary help and retailing.