United States, 162,000 more jobs in August and unemployment holding at 4.1%
The jobs report released on September 4 exceeds by more than three times the economists' estimate cited by Axios. Revisions add 55,000 jobs to the two previous months.
This morning’s 6:30 edition had covered European markets, with the September 3 close. In the afternoon comes the figure that in the United States shapes monetary policy expectations: the monthly jobs report.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced on Friday, September 4, 162,000 jobs added in August, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.1%. The number is reported by Axios, working from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and by the Associated Press, citing the Department of Labor. These are two distinct sources tracing back to the same primary institutional source.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Jobs added in August | 162,000 |
| Consensus estimate by economists (source: Axios) | 53,000 |
| Unemployment rate | 4.1% |
| Combined revision for June and July | +55,000 |
The gap with expectations
The report should first be read for its distance from forecasts. Axios puts the consensus estimate by economists at 53,000: the actual result is more than three times that figure. It is this gap, more than the absolute level, that constitutes the economic information, because it is what forces traders and analysts to redo their calculations on a picture they had taken for granted.
The second piece of information concerns the months already closed out. Revisions added a total of 55,000 jobs to the June and July figures, according to both outlets. The Associated Press notes that the initial July reading, which had shown a loss of 23,000 jobs, was revised upward. The outlet explicitly flags the direction of this correction, as it does for every revision of a figure: here it is an upward adjustment of a preliminary reading.
Why a preliminary figure changes
The monthly U.S. jobs numbers come out as an estimate and are then recalculated in subsequent releases, as responses to the business survey continue to come in. This is why a historical series read today does not match the sequence of headlines that came out month by month: the first July reading told of a contraction, the current reading tells the opposite.
This has a practical consequence for readers: August’s 162,000 is itself an estimate, and it may be revised in future releases, in either direction. The unemployment rate, by contrast, comes from a different survey — the household survey — and the fact that it remains at 4.1% means that the share of people looking for work without finding it has not moved compared with the previous month.
What we do not know
The excerpts available to us do not contain a sector breakdown of the figure: we do not know which sectors contributed to the 162,000 jobs, nor how they are distributed between the private and public sectors. They do not contain wage dynamics, which normally accompany this report and are the variable most closely watched by the central bank.
Above all, they do not contain any official reaction from the Federal Reserve nor statements by its officials on the figure: this newspaper does not attribute to anyone conclusions it has not found in writing. Likewise we do not report any movements in indices or yields linked to the release, because there are none in the excerpts available.
What remains is an institutional figure and a measurable discrepancy: the August reading exceeded the market’s expected estimate by 109,000 units, and the revision of the two previous months moved the picture in the same direction.
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