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 9:24 a.m. in New York, at 3.70%. Stock futures erased losses, and contracts on the S&P 500 were up 0.1%. The dollar dipped.
