Here are the key takeaways from the US employment report for August released Friday:
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 142,000, which marked an acceleration from July but was notably less than the 165,000 median forecast in Bloomberg’s survey. – and there was a cumulative 86,000 reduction in payroll increases for the prior two months. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.2%, as expected, with the household survey showing a pickup in employment growth and an expansion in the size of the labor force, where the participation rate held at 62.7%. The unemployment rate for Black Americans fell in August, while that for White people held steady and the jobless rates for Asian and Hispanic people climbed. Pay gains beat forecasts, with average hourly earnings rising 0.4% compared with a 0.3% median estimate. The year-on-year earnings increase was 3.8%, picking up from the slowest pace in more than two years in July. Average hours worked also ticked higher, to 34.3 from 34.2. Private-sector services employers drove payroll gains in August, with leisure and education and health services the main contributors. Government jobs also increased, while payrolls at manufacturers declined. Interest-rate futures showed traders amping up bets on a 50 basis-point interest-rate cut by the Fed at this month’s meeting, and two-year yields were down about 4 basis points as of 9:24am in New York, at 3.70%. Stock futures erased losses, and contracts on the S&P 500 were up 0.1%. The dollar dipped.
