The August Jobs Report

The August jobs report is out! The US economy created 235,000 new jobs last month. That’s well below expectations of 720,000. That’s not exactly the Fed’s “substantial further progress.”

The unemployment rate fell to 5.2% which is a post-Covid low. There were 243,000 private sector jobs added, and in manufacturing, 37,000 jobs were created.

August’s total was the worst since January and comes with heightened fears of the pandemic and the impact that rising Covid cases could have on what has been so far a mostly robust recovery. The weak report could cloud policy for the Federal Reserve, which is weighing whether to pull back on some of the massive stimulus it has been adding since the outbreak in early 2020.

“Today’s jobs report reflects a major pullback in employment growth likely due to the rising impact of the Delta variant of COVID-19 on the U.S. economy, though August is also a notoriously difficult month to survey accurately due to vacations,” said Tony Bedikian, head of global markets at Citizens.

The jobs gain number for July was revised from 943,000 to 1,053,000. June was revised to 962,000 from 938,000.

Average hourly earnings rose by 0.6% last month. That’s a very big increase. Over the past year, wages rose by 4.3%. The labor force participation rate was 61.7%. The broader U-6 rate was 8.8%.

Posted by on September 3rd, 2021 at 8:37 am


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