WASHINGTON _ August was a good month for blue-collar jobs, but hiring overall from earlier in the summer and there was no indication of an upturn in wage growth, which has been missing in the nation's long economic recovery.
Despite solid gains in manufacturing, construction and mining, U.S. job growth overall last month fell short of recent trends. Employers added 156,000 net new jobs, a slowdown from payroll increases of 189,000 in July and 210,000 in June, the Labor Department said Friday.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, from 4.3 percent in July. Average hourly earnings barely rose, and the typical number of hours worked per week fell slipped a fraction last month.
Economists cautioned against reading too much into one's month data, especially coming in a summer when seasonal factors are trickier for statisticians to filter out.
Job creation last month was still more than enough to absorb the growth in the working-age population. The unemployment figure remains just shy of a 16-year low, and the economy this summer entered its ninth year of expansion.
Analysts said the August jobs report was not likely to alter the Federal Reserve's views of the economy and its plans to gradually withdraw monetary support for the economy by selling some bonds and raising interest rates once more this year.
Still, the latest snapshot of the labor market was broadly disappointing, and it adds to the uncertainty that has risen after Hurricane Harvey.
Labor Department officials made it clear that Harvey, which pounded southeast Texas over the last week, had no effect on the jobs report because data were collected earlier in the month. But economists expect initial unemployment claims to jump over the next few weeks as many businesses and workers have been immobilized by the devastating storms in Houston and across the Gulf Coast.
Harvey also could have a modest effect on the employment numbers in September, by some estimates reducing national job growth by 30,000 this month. Though that isn't much, it nonetheless won't help the labor market or the broader economy.
The economy had been gathering steam in recent months, with economic output climbing by an annual rate of 3 percent in the second quarter and on pace for similar growth in the current quarter.
A separate report Friday showed the nation's manufacturing sector expanded robustly in August behind strong gains in employment and inventory measures.
As destructive as Harvey was _ some damage estimates top $100 billion _ most economists think the disaster's impact to the nation's economy will be relatively minor or transitory. Barclays Bank estimated that Harvey would knock a sizable 1 to 1.5 percentage point from third-quarter GDP growth because of the high-value-added energy sectors in the Gulf Coast and the timing of the storm's landfall.
But with U.S. consumers already paying a little more for gasoline, if job growth and earnings should slow further, the crimp to economic growth will likely be more lasting. On Friday, Macroeconomic Advisers shaved 0.2 percentage points from its third-quarter growth forecast because of the unexpected weakness in employment, hours and earnings in August and what they imply for incomes and spending.
Last month, the average workweek for all employees dropped a notch to 34.4 hours. And average hourly earnings rose just 3 cents to $26.39, down from the 9-cent increase in July. Compared with a year ago, the average pay in August was up 2.5 percent _ the same modest pace as in past months.
Analysts had been expecting wages to grow more quickly as unemployment fell to low levels and more employers reported trouble finding workers.
Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta acknowledged the slow pay gains, saying "real wage growth has room for improvement." But his statement Friday focused on the bright spots in the report, particularly the solid gains for America's blue-collar workers.
Manufacturers last month added 36,000 jobs. Much of them came in auto manufacturing, a sector in which payrolls can be volatile in the summer as companies retool their plants. One notable exception was apparel manufacturing, which continued its long slide in employment.
Construction hiring rose 28,000, after being listless in the previous five months. And the mining sector, which includes oil and gas extraction, added 6,500 jobs, continuing a rebound this year after losses in the past two years from depressed petroleum prices.
Acosta noted that the unemployment rate for Americans with less than a high school diploma dropped nearly a full percentage point last month and is now down to its lowest figure in nearly 11 years, at 6 percent. In fact, the jobless rate for this group has been lower than 6 percent just once in the last 25 years of record-keeping by the Labor Department.
The August unemployment rate for high school graduates was 5.1 percent. It was 3.8 percent for adult workers with some college, and 2.4 percent for those who have at least a college degree.
The white-collar industries, or the larger service-producing part of the economy, did not have a particularly strong month. Apart from business and professional services and health services, which had decent job growth, most of the other service employers hired little or cut back.
Leisure and hospitality, one of the fastest growing lower-paying sectors in recent years, added just 4,000 jobs last month. Employment in retail trade and transportation was essentially unchanged.
Government, meanwhile, cut 9,000 jobs in August, and payrolls in the high-wage information sector were down 8,000 _ more than half in the film industry.
