Look! It’s Mr. Softee

Hopes for strong job creation just melted away

T HE job

market didn’t go “splat” in August. But if it were drawn as a cartoon, the bubble above President

Trump’s head would definitely say “Arghhh” — the sound of disappointment.

The US Labor Department announced on Friday that job growth in August fell to 156,000. The experts on Wall Street had been expecting about 180,000 new jobs, and those predictions had risen over the last few days because of a healthy ADP National Employment Report earlier in the week.

August broke a string of good government reports in May, June and July, when job growth averaged a relatively impressive 195,000 a month.

Just to add to the disappointment, those previous months’ reports were revised downward.

May is beyond the point where adjustments are made. But June went from a previously reported 231,000 new jobs to 210,000. And July was revised down from a healthy 209,000 jobs to an ordinary 189,000.

So not only did August come in below expectations but another 41,000 jobs were removed from the tally because of those second thoughts. The average monthly gain over the most recent three months is now down to 185,000.

Still good. But not as good as it had been. And it is trending in the wrong direction.

In October, the Labor Department will do preliminary benchmark revisions, which basically correct the errors of the past year. It’ll be fun to see just how much more the estimates are changed.

A full revision doesn’t come until February, and my guess is that the amount of job growth in 2017 will be reduced significantly.

The unemployment rate in August was also disappointing — rising from 4.3 percent to 4.4 percent — although the Labor Department chose to call it “little changed” in the first paragraph of its press release. I haven’t paid too close attention, but I wonder how often the term “little changed” is used when the unemployment rate moves down.

Hurricane Harvey, which ripped through Texas and Louisiana too late for the August report, will definitely make the employment data — and all economic numbers — more unpredictable in the months ahead.

While the storm stopped commerce altogether in parts of Texas and produced widespread damage that will hurt business, especially insurance companies, the storm will eventually lead to reconstruction that might boost the economy sometime later.

Whether the net effect of the storm is positive or negative is anyone’s guess. But Harvey will definitely cause economic data in the near future to be more jumpy, or — as the statisticians say — “noisy.”

“Today’s job report showed broadbased softening,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae. “Weakening job gains, sizable downward revisions, a declining average workweek and a weak rise in average hourly earnings over the month.”

Ironically, the disappointing job numbers come in the same week that the Trump administration got good economic news — gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter that ended in June showed 3 percent annualized growth.

The Trump administration has set 3 percent growth as its goal, even though that amount of economic expansion doesn’t set any records by historical standards. Still, 3 percent is better than the US has had recently. The trouble is, the GDP figure is as unreliable as any other number when it first comes out of the government’s computers. When the tally for the whole year was taken, the economy had expanded by just 2.6 percent. Ordinary growth. And well below the 3.22 percent growth that the US has averaged annually since 1947. After considering all these numbers, I know what you are going to say — “Phew! Enough of this, it’s time to start the Labor Day barbecue.” My sentiments exactly.