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Hiring slowed in April and workers dropped out of the labor force in droves — not a good sign for the job market going forward.

The economy added just 115,000 jobs in the month, the Labor Department reported Friday, down from March when employers created 154,000 jobs.

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Obama battles job crisis

The U.S. lost 4.3 million jobs in President Obama’s first 13 months in office. Track his progress since then.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% as 342,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. At 63.6%, the portion of the working-age population participating in the job market is now at its lowest level since 1981.

That’s problematic mainly because it weighs on economic growth.

"If there are less people working, then your potential for what the economy can produce is reduced," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo.

Job market dropouts

The labor market has been on a roller coaster this year, with job growth starting off strong in the first couple of months of 2012. Then a disappointing slowdown in March led many to wonder whether the recovery was taking a turn for the worse. April’s weak growth compounded those fears.

But revisions from previous months also showed the economy gained 53,000 more jobs in February and March than originally thought.

Some economists believe the slowdown now is mainly due to the seasonal adjustments the government uses in calculating its figures. Warm weather earlier in the year may have given the job market an artificial boost in January and February, which is now tapering off.

"This is payback in terms of the weather," Silvia said.

Retailers added 29,000 jobs in April, while restaurants and bars added 20,000 workers. Temporary agencies hired 21,000 and manufacturers added 16,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the government continued to slash workers.

Recruiters say they’re still seeing plenty of demand for high-skill workers in technology, health care and professional services like accounting, but not enough of America’s unemployed have the right qualifications.

"Companies are changing and innovating, and therefore the jobs that they need are changing," said Kathy Kane, senior vice president of talent management at Adecco Group North America. "The hardest part for us right now is to keep up with those changes and find the workers with the skills for the new jobs, not the old jobs."

Indeed, workers with a bachelors degree or higher have only a 4% unemployment rate, while those with just a high school education have a 7.9% jobless rate.

Overall, the job market has a long way to go to climb out of the deep hole left by the financial crisis. Of the 8.8 million jobs lost, only about 3.7 million have been added back.

Roughly 12.5 million Americans remain unemployed, and 41.3% of them have been so for six months or more. 

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U.S. service companies, which employ roughly 90 percent of the work force, expanded more slowly in April. Companies saw less growth in new orders and hired at a weaker pace.

The Institute for Supply Management says its index of non-manufacturing activity dropped to 53.5 last month from 56 in March. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

The ISM’s survey covers all sectors outside of manufacturing. That includes retail, construction, financial services, health care, and hotels.

The slowdown in services comes as consumers have reined in their spending a bit. Consumer spending rose in March, but by much less than in the two previous months.

Americans are spending more on goods, such as cars and appliances, but are holding back when it comes to services. A government report Monday showed that spending on services was flat in March.

The ISM’s services index reached the highest point in a year in February, when it was 57.3. Consumers stepped up their spending that month at the fastest pace in seven months.

And in the first quarter, Americans increased their spending at the fastest pace in a year. But most of those gains were in January and February. And Americans spent more while saving less, a trend that economists worry isn’t sustainable guaranteed online personal loans.

The job market is improving, but incomes are barely growing. That could weigh on consumer spending in the coming months, dragging on the services sector.

Manufacturing has been the driving force behind the economic recovery. Economists would like to see services firms contribute more. On Tuesday, the ISM said that the manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in 10 months. Measures of new orders, production and employment all rose. But manufacturing accounts for only about 12 percent of U.S. output.

Services firms need to step up hiring to accelerate job gains and rapidly push down the unemployment rate. The service sector includes low-paying positions in retail and restaurants. But it also has higher-paying jobs in professions such as information technology, accounting and financial services.

The government will release the April employment jobs report on Friday. Economists are predicting that employers added 163,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate will remain 8.2 percent.

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Chinese tourists traveling to Europe to take advantage of savings as much as 50 percent on designer clothes and accessories are finding fewer bargains.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC) and its peers are raising prices to make up for lost business in China and lower profitability outside the country, even if it puts items like 2,270-euro ($3,000) Lockit handbags further out of reach for Europeans whose disposable incomes are shrinking amid austerity.

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Rupert Murdoch’s News International is challenging celebrity phone hacking victim Sienna Miller over her legal bill, a person close to the case said late Wednesday.

Miller was one of the first public figures to take the British newspaper company to court for illegally eavesdropping on her telephone messages.

In May, News International agreed to pay the “Alfie” star 100,000 pounds (about $160,000) to settle her claim, but a person close to the case says there’s been no agreement how much to pay out in legal costs and that the issue is headed to court.

The person provided no detail as to when any potential hearing would take place, speaking anonymously because the information wasn’t cleared for release.

News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined comment, as did Miller’s lawyer, Mark Thomson.

The scandal over illegal interception of voicemail messages at News International’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid has taken a bite out of parent company News Corp.’s bottom line. In February, Murdoch’s international media company disclosed that legal bills linked to police and parliamentary probes, a judge-led inquiry, and a slew of lawsuits was close to $200 million.

In the last quarter of 2011 alone, the company paid out $87 million, the vast majority of which was for legal and consulting fees.

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Zimbabwe has taken majority ownership of all foreign-owned mining companies, Zimbabwe’s black empowerment minister said Thursday, a move the prime minister told companies to ignore, saying it could create “anarchy in the industry” in the already ruptured economy.

Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said in a statement that all companies that did not meet a late 2011 deadline to submit proposals to cede a controlling stake to blacks have forfeited 51 percent of their shareholdings and are now “deemed to be owned by the state.”

Zimbabwe has large Australian, Canadian and South African mining interests _ including giants Rio Tinto, Canadile and Anglo American _ and with scores of small white-owned gold mines.

The empowerment drive has split the shaky three-year-old coalition government. Critics says it has scared off much-needed investment and is being used as a political ploy ahead of elections President Robert Mugabe wants this year.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader, immediately urged the nation to ignore Kasukuwere and said the empowerment laws did not allow him to “unilaterally nationalize private entities.”

“There is no reason to create panic among investors by projecting the image of a voracious government keen to grab compulsorily people’s companies without compensation,” he said. “It is not the policy of this government to nationalize the mining businesses or any other business.”

Tsvangirai said he took a serious view of attempts to incite the public to act unlawfully against mining businesses.

Kasukuwere’s statement “poses a real risk of creating anarchy in the industry” and his party in the power sharing coalition will take “corrective measures,” he said.

In his Thursday announcement, Kasukuwere said profits since Sept. 25 from the government’s new controlling shareholdings were also regarded as “property of the state.” But he said companies that made a loss since then would have to cover losses from their side, and not draw from the “indigenized portion” held by the state to pay debt.

There was no immediate reaction from mining companies on the eve of the Easter holiday. Many Zimbabwean businesses shut down early for the four-day break.

Mining firms depend on foreign investment to maintain and replace aging equipment not financed by revenues from mineral exports already subject to royalties and tax.

Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe needed policies that created jobs for the millions of unemployed in the country.

“They want massive investment in the country and not a political campaign platform that will only benefit the elite at the expense of the majority,” he said.

Economist John Robertson said Kasukuwere’s announcement is likely to be difficult to enforce no checking account payday advance.

“It may be bullying to scare companies into handing over shares,” he said.

He said many firms let the Sept. 25 deadline pass because the government _ reeling under debt after a decade of economic turmoil _ didn’t offer payment for shares as required under the empowerment laws.

“The money isn’t here to pay or to develop the mines if they are nationalized in the same way commercial farms were deemed state land. Only foreigners have the money and they won’t bring it to have half of it taken from them,” he said.

The agriculture-based economy went into meltdown after Mugabe ordered seizures of thousands of white-owned farms in 2000. Many seizures turned violent.

Robertson described the empowerment drive in its present form as “dishonest” and said it will likely lead to mines being left to stagnate, with worsening poverty for all but an elite minority gaining foreign assets.

“Tens of thousands of our young people will be disempowered by being denied skills training and jobs,” he said.

Last month, Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum producer said it had reached an “acceptable” agreement with the government to yield 51 percent ownership to blacks.

South Africa’s Implats, owner of 87 percent of the Zimbabwe producer Zimplats, said a joint technical team of experts from both sides was working out methods of transferring a majority stake worth at least $500 million.

But Implats chief executive David Brown has said the transfer won’t take place if Zimbabwe doesn’t pay up, adding international legal steps could be taken if Zimplats is forcibly nationalized without payment.

Zimbabwe and South Africa are the world’s largest suppliers of platinum, a corrosion-resistant metal with a wide range of industrial uses that is priced in the same range as gold.

Zimplats employs 8,000 workers in Zimbabwe.

Foreign cash inflows have dwindled in recent months amid uncertainty over the security of possible investments.

Tourism, now the second-biggest hard currency earner after mining since agricultural exports collapsed, has been affected by political and economic uncertainty and security concerns ahead of the elections proposed by Mugabe. Tensions and intimidation have heightened this year, rights groups say.

Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi said Wednesday that Westerners were being discouraged by their governments from visiting Zimbabwe.

“We all know what happens when a tourism destination is plagued by insecurity,” he said.

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A downtown building left vacant by businessmen brothers Mike and Steve Roberts is getting new life from a developer who is refurbishing the building as apartments.

Developer Brian Hayden said Tuesday he plans to open the $6.5 million project, at 400 Washington Avenue, on April 13 to coincide with the Cardinals’ home opener.

But Hayden said a more basic reason for undertaking the project is to profit from St. Louis University’s decision to relocate its law school to downtown from the main campus in midtown. Hayden, who has a SLU degree in aerospace administration, already has two apartment projects near the university’s main or medical school campuses.

About five years ago, the Roberts brothers had a plan to develop 400 Washington as a hotel. Their Roberts Downtown Development Co. bought the former WS Hotel with an eye toward redoing it as extended-stay lodging. They later abandoned that plan and put the building up for sale last year.

Hayden said he is refurbishing the former WS Hotel rooms as 78 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments. The WS Hotel suites, developed for extended stays, have full kitchens, Hayden noted. He said work on his project, called Gallery 400, began as soon as he completed the building’s purchase on Feb. 7.

The structure, across Washington Avenue from the Missouri Athletic Club, was built as the headquarters of Edison Brothers Stores.

Hayden is an anomaly among St. Louis developers because he uses no tax incentives or tax credits in his projects. Like his Gallery 3450 project on Russell Boulevard and his Gallery on Washington, near SLU, the new downtown project is financed without public incentives, he said.

“If the project can’t support itself financially, then it shouldn’t be done,” Hayden said. “Every project should stand on its own merit.”

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Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim was nominated by the U.S. to head the World Bank, making him the first physician and Asian-American to lead the lender that provided $57 billion to developing countries last fiscal year for everything from building roads to improving access to health care.

Kim, 52, who was born in Seoul and emigrated with his parents from South Korea at age five, would succeed Robert Zoellick, a former U.S. trade representative whose term ends in June. The U.S. is the biggest shareholder in the Washington- based bank, which has always been led by an American.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty plans to include new measures to expedite environmental approvals for energy projects in next week