- Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 142,000 during August, down from 89,000 in July and below the 161,000 consensus forecast.
- The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2%, as expected. However, the “real” unemployment rate edged up to 7.9%, its highest reading since October 2021.
- The previous two months saw substantial downward revisions. The BLS cut July’s total by 25,000, while June fell to 118,000, a downward revision of 61,000.
- Average hourly earnings increased by 0.4% on the month and 3.8% from a year ago, both higher than the respective estimates for 0.3% and 3.7%.
The U.S. economy created slightly fewer jobs than expected in August, reflecting a slowing labor market while also clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates later this month.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/06/jobs-report-august-2024.html
So the U.S. economy added 142k jobs in August.
But June’s number was revised down by 61k jobs and July’s number was revised down by 25k jobs, for a total of 86k of negative revisions.
We’ve had negative revisions in 6 out of the last 7 months. 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/ECStkBInhn
— Kalani o Māui (@MauiBoyMacro) September 6, 2024
There was some good news and some bad news in today’s jobs report – first the bad news: the August payrolls number came in at 142K, a small miss to estimates of a 165K print, if a big jump from the downward revised July print of 89K. The good news, however, is that while the payrolls print missed, the unemployment rate actually dipped from that critical “Sahm’s Rule trigger” level of 4.3%, to 4.2%, in line with expectations. So bottom line: the number could be better, but it is certainly not bad enough to trigger a 50bps rate cut in two weeks.
h/t DOORBERT