Federal Reserve policymakers already skeptical of the need for an interest-rate hike this month gained some ground against their more hawkish colleagues after a government report Friday showed USA job gains slowed last month.
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The official unemployment rate, based on a separate survey of households, remained at 4.9 per cent.
IMO, nothing to change the presidential race or give the Fed reason to hike. “But it’s solid enough to engender a heated policy discussion”, said Mohamed el-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, in Newport Beach, California.
In August, though, hiring weakened across most major industries, and employers cut workers in manufacturing, construction and mining.
The jump comes after U.S. non-farm payrolls figures showed 151,000 additional jobs were added to the market last month, missing consensus estimates for a 180,000 rise.
Traders trimmed the probability of a Fed rate hike this month to 21 percent from the 24-percent chance on Thursday, according to CME Group’s FedWatch program.
The current pace of hiring is still enough to lower the jobless rate over time – but for now, it’s holding steady at 4.9 percent.
The dollar was marginally higher against a basket of currencies. On the Nasdaq, 1,772 issues rose and 952 fell.
The step-down in employment would come after the economy created a total of 547,000 jobs in June and July.
The U.S. economy added 151,000 net new jobs in August, below consensus expectations for 180,000. The rise in payrolls reinforces views that the economy has regained speed after nearly stalling in the first half of the year.
Over the last several years, the government’s August payrolls estimates have been weak prior to upward revisions.
Now, the weaker-than-expected August jobs report “has done a disservice to the Fed’s “driving from the back seat” communication strategy”, Komileva said, observing that “outlier” jobs reports this year have provided no useful guide to the “remarkably and persistently resilient” usa employment trend. A rate hike at the September Federal Open Market Committee meeting was seen as a possibility.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.1 percent from a month earlier to $25.73, following a 0.3 percent increase in the prior month.
The average work week for all workers decreased by 6 minutes to 34.3 hours in July, the lowest since 2014 and the first drop in six months.
Both the labor force participation rate, 62.8 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 59.7 percent, were also unchanged in August.
The greenback also jumped 0.98 percent to 104.27 yen, the highest level since July 29. Then, 14 of 21 primary dealers, or firms that do business directly with the Fed, had forecast a year-end federal funds rate of 0.63 percent.
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The for-hire truckload segment added 400 jobs in July and the LTL segment added 900 jobs in July, the latest month for which employment data is available for those segments.
