Washington (AFP) – US job creation slowed in August while the unemployment rate moved a notch higher, according to a key data report released Friday.
The new numbers were sure to be unwelcome at the White House, where President Donald Trump has portrayed himself as a chief job creator.
But analysts said the new numbers should not fundamentally alter the picture of a healthy jobs market, with the trend of steady job creation continuing.
The world’s largest economy added 156,000 net new positions for the month, the Labor Department reported, which was far fewer than expected.
The jobless rate rose a tenth of a point to 4.4 percent, returning to the level seen in June.
Hurricane Harvey did not have any impact on the August jobs numbers, because the data was collected before the storm made landfall in Texas August 26, the Labor Department said.
Analysts had warned that the August jobs numbers can sometimes be soft, at least in the initial report, but even so the figure fell well below a consensus forecast of 183,000.
Trump has pledged to add 25 million jobs over the next decade — a goal economists say is unrealistic.
With payroll gains for the prior three months revised downward by a cumulative 48,000, average monthly job creation for 2017 now stands at 176,000, compared to 187,000 in 2016.
– August always weak –
John Ryding of RDQ Economics was among the economists stressing that August tends to be weak.
“We warned that these data could not be taken at face value with the tendency for August payrolls to be initially estimated low and then revised higher over the next two months,” he said in a client note.
He also noted that the downward revisions to the prior months were entirely in government jobs, while the private sector actually saw a net gain of 10,000 new positions.
Private employment rose by 165,000 in the latest month, below the 173,000 forecast, and far below the 237,000 reported this week by payroll services firm ADP.
The biggest gains were seen in services, a dominant part of the economy, but manufacturing employment rose 36,000, putting the sector up 155,000 since reaching a low point in November.
And the construction industry added 28,000 workers in August.
The government workforce contracted again last month, falling by 9,000.
Average hourly earnings posted a sluggish 0.1 percent gain for the month, putting them up 2.5 percent year-on-year.
The number of people unemployed was little changed at 7.1 million, with the jobless rate wavering between 4.3 and 4.4 percent since April.
The number of long-term unemployed, those looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, was essentially unchanged at 1.7 million people.