A No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Jobs Report
If you squint at the latest jobs report, you might find something to cheer about. But if you look at it with clear eyes, what you really see is an economy downshifting and bracing for impact.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics told us Friday that employers added 142,000 jobs in August—hardly anything to write home about and well short of expectations for the second month in a row. Add to that the revisions to June and July, which collectively erased 86,000 jobs from the books, and the three-month average is now a tepid 116,000. That’s a far cry from the 202,000 monthly average we saw last year.
If we narrow that down to the private sector, employment grew by 73,900 in August, falling short of the consensus forecast of 136,000. What’s more, the prior month’s private sector figure was revised down from a lukewarm 97,000 to a chilly…
