Who knows how accurate this report is, but the employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for August were not good. Only 22,000 jobs were added, far below expectations. As usual, there were revisions to the prior two months, July up by 6,000 to a still-weak number, and June down by 40,000. I would note that on a huge employment base, 163 million people, the statistical meaning of these little changes is dubious, but they probably show trend and the trend is to lower employment. The unemployment rate also rose, to 4.3%, and is substantially higher among African-Americans and Hispanics, two groups that Reps had been making inroads with. (BLS Report)
Unlike the business survey, the household survey showed a gain in employment of 288,000, continuing a divergence in the surveys. Full-time jobs were down about 357,000, part-time work was up 597,000 and multiple job holders up by 443,000. These are all signs of some economic stress. The native born employed was down by 561,000 while foreign-born increased by 50,000. This is a reversal of recent trends, but I suspect the foreign-born worker increase is legal immigrants at this point. We have 7.4 million unemployed people, a large junk of whom don’t really want to work, prefering to live on all the government freebies. Forcing those people to work would provide an immense economic boost and make their lives a lot more meaningful. Wages rose 3.7% year-over-year, barely enough for the average person to keep up real inflation.
For all of Trump’s ballyhooing about the tariffs bringing back manufacturing to the US, employment in the manufacturing sector is actually down 78,000 year-over-year. Health care showed an increase in employment and most other sectors were essentially unchanged. The report virtually guarantees that the Federal Reserve will cut its interest rates this month, but what impact that has on after-market rates or economic activity is unclear. Eliminating the tariff chaos would do a lot to improve the overall economy and hiring.
You comment negatively on Trump’s “ballyhooing” of bringing production back to America, but he has, after all, only been in office for six months. Large capital investments take time to complete and then to staff up. I’m guessing Trump is basically correct, but the jobs impact is yet to be seen.