An attendee holds a “Join Our Team” flyer during the Best Hire Chicago Career Fair in Chicago, Illinois, US, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. <\/p>\n
Jim Vondruska | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Job creation sputtered in August, adding to recent signs of labor market weakening and likely keeping the Federal Reserve on track for a widely anticipated interest rate cut later this month.<\/p>\n
Nonfarm payrolls increased by just 22,000 for the month, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for payrolls to rise by 75,000.<\/p>\n
The report showed a marked slowdown from the July increase of 79,000, which was revised up by 6,000. Revisions also showed a net loss of 13,000 in June after the prior estimate was lowered by 27,000.<\/p>\n
The report was the first since President Donald Trump fired former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following the release of the July jobs report a month ago. The move came after the report showed not just a weak level of job creation but also dramatic reductions in previous months’ totals.<\/p>\n
In McEntarfer’s place, the president nominated economist E.J. Antoni, a Trump loyalist from the Heritage Foundation who previously had criticized the BLS numbers as being politically distorted. William Wiatrowski is serving as acting BLS commissioner.<\/p>\n
While the pace of hiring was slow, average hourly earnings increased 0.3% for the month, meeting the estimate, though the annual gain of 3.7% was slightly below the forecast for 3.8%.<\/p>\n
Hiring was held back by a payroll reduction in the federal government, which reported a decline of 15,000.<\/p>\n
Health care again led by sectors, adding 31,000 jobs, while social assistance contributed 16,000. Wholesale trade and manufacturing both saw declines of 12,000 on the month.<\/p>\n
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An attendee holds a “Join Our Team” flyer during the Best Hire Chicago Career Fair in Chicago, Illinois,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[251,2342,2339,138,553,219,232,220,111,139,69,241],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-economy","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-jobs","tag-markets","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}