US added 315,000 jobs in August as strong market defies signs of worsening economy
The US added another 315,000 jobs in August as the jobs market remained strong amid signs of a worsening economy.
The US jobs market lost 22m jobs in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic but roared back after the Covid lockdowns ended. It has remained strong despite four-decade high rates of inflation and slowing economic growth. In July, the US unexpectedly added 528,000 new jobs, restoring employment to pre-pandemic levels.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7% in August from 3.5% in July but is still close to a 50-year low.
The remarkable strength of the jobs market has spurred the Federal Reserve to sharply increase interest rates in the hopes of cooling the economy and bringing down prices.
Last week the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, made clear the Fed intends to keep raising rates sharply as the central bank struggles to tamp down inflation. His speech triggered a meltdown on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones index losing 1,000 points. The latest jobs report is the last to be released before the Fed meets again in September.
Earlier this week the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters that the White House was “expecting job numbers to cool off a bit” as the economy transitions from the “historic economic growth that we saw last year to a more stable and steady growth”.
There are mixed signals about the health of the job market. Major employers including Ford and Walmart have announced plans for large layoffs, and 50% of businesses surveyed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers last month said they were reducing their headcount or planning to.
At the same time, the government reported this week there were 11.2m open job positions in July – two openings for every unemployed person. New claims for jobless
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