Not really, but it was a surprise to the experts on the upside. They were projecting maybe 50,000 jobs added; we got 162,000 new jobs in August, and July and June were revised upward by a total of 55,000 new jobs. So pending further revisions, we have over 200,000 new jobs, which is good, but not great, jobs report. More interestingly, the household survey shows that 569,000 more people were employed; and the unemployment rate was unchanged. I still think the removal of millions of illegal immigrants is messing with the numbers and especially year-over-year comparisons. For all the concern about divergence in the two surveys, one of business and one of households, they track each other pretty well, considering that we are talking about changes to a 160 million plus base.
We continue to have an astounding number of slackers, who don’t even try to look for work. Full-time jobs increased by over 700,000 while part-time jobs declined. That is a very positive trend. Large job gains occurred in food services, local government education, and health care and social services. Not exactly the private sector areas we prefer to see job growth in. Construction and manufacturing are showing some job gains, which is a positive. We continue to see minor job losses in information technology, which could be due to AI, as it replaces some coding positions.
Wages rose about .3% for the month, and 3.1% for the past twelve months. That is barely keeping up with inflation. There were immediate fears that the Federal Reserve would now raise interest rates for sure, but I think the economy is not running hot, and inflation is not really out of control, and interest rate increases are their own form of inflation, so why would they. I am not convinced that the Fed raising interest rates has nearly the effect it is supposed to have. I can’t imagine that is really the best or most effective tool for limiting inflation. (BLS Release)
