Hiring in the US remained solid last month, despite turmoil stemming from changes to trade policy.
Employers added 177,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2%, the Labor Department said.
The gain was bigger than many analysts had expected in a month marked by chaos in financial markets and rising concerns about the economy tracked in surveys of businesses and households.
The resilience of the US jobs market over the last few years has surprised analysts, helping to sustain spending even as households faced rising prices and a sharp jump in interest rates.
The latest figures have raised some hopes that the country may be able to weather the uncertainty from tariff policy without suffering a painful economic downturn.
But analysts expressed caution, noting that the impact of the sweeping import taxes announced by Donald Trump would take more time to be fully felt.
Olu Sonola, head of US economic research at Fitch Ratings, said it was a good jobs report, despite revisions showing employers added fewer jobs in January and February than initially estimated.
"The key message coming from the totality of the data this week is that the US economy was fundamentally strong through the first week of April, however, the outlook remains very uncertain," he said.
The Labor Department's surveys were conducted less than two weeks after Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs, which have raised the average rate of import taxes in the US to the highest level in more than a century.