August saw a decline in the number of Americans finding work, a warning that the labour market may finally be weakening along with the rest of the economy.
Reduced from the almost 528,000 jobs created previous month and in line with experts’ predictions, employers added 351,000 new positions.
As more persons joined the labour market and were recorded as jobless, the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage points, to 3.7% from 3.5%.
“The employment data for August was much worse than the figure for July.
However, the economy is still creating employment faster than the long-term average, and there are currently 240,000 more jobs than there were before the epidemic “Bright MLS’s chief economist, Lisa Sturtevant, said in a note.
“After the very positive July employment data, the Federal Reserve had hoped to see a slower rate of job creation. August’s slowdown in job growth might be an indication that the Federal Reserve’s policies are beginning to take hold “Added she.
In an effort to combat rising inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, which has weakened the employment market.
One encouraging sign of a weakening economy has been hiring: Despite projections from the government that the economy shrunk in the first half of this year, which is a technical definition of a recession, companies have created 440,000 new jobs on average each month during the last three months, a record-breaking number.
This story is still developing.