US added 201,000 jobs in August
Employment gains signal economy remains strong
Hiring rebounded in August as employers added 201,000 jobs and the labor market continued to defy worker shortages and U.S. trade battles. Yearly wage growth hit a nine-year high.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected 195,000 payroll gains.
On the downside, employment increases for June and July were revised down by a total 50,000. June’s gain was lowered from 248,000 to 208,000 and July’s from 157,000 to 147,000. Still, monthly gains for the year are averaging a robust 207,000.
“The U.S. economy is barreling full steam ahead,” economist Leslie Preston of TD economics wrote in a note to clients.
Hiring can be volatile in August as teachers and other employees return to work after summer lulls. That makes it more challenging for Labor to adjust the employment totals to account for seasonal variations. In recent years, Labor has revised up its initial estimates for August, often significantly. Goldman Sachs reckons the measurement glitch reduced last month’s job count by at least 40,000.
Other economists, though, have expected payroll growth to slow as employers increasingly struggle to find available workers now that the jobless rate has dipped below 4 percent. So far this year, the labor market has shrugged off the worker shortages, turning out an average of more than 200,000 job gains a month, up from 182,000 in 2017. That may be due to a pool of discouraged and other workers who had been on the sidelines, but some experts believe that supply will soon run thin.
Trade tensions also could have dented business confidence and dampened hiring last month, Goldman Sachs says. In early July, the Trump administration slapped tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports and announced a proposed list of tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese goods.
Average hourly earnings rose 10 cents to $27.16. And so wages were up 2.9 percent from a year earlier, up from 2.7 percent in July and the biggest annual jump since June 2009. The large increase could indicate that wage growth is finally picking up more rapidly amid intense competition for workers.