WASHINGTON—The nation’s unemployment rate stayed at 4.1% in August, while the number of jobless people rose by 115,000 to 7.031 million, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
The private sector claimed to create 127,000 new jobs while governments added 35,000, a separate survey showed. But the private sector figure is unadjusted and incomplete and in the past it’s been revised downwards. The adjusted private sector job growth in August was 86,000 jobs added.
That was only part of the story. To keep up with population growth, the private sector, according to some economists at the Economic Policy Institute and elsewhere, must add 200,000-250,000 new jobs every month, and it didn’t in August, regardless of which figure is used. And take away the two lowest-paying private jobs sectors—hotels, bars and restaurants, and health care—and the private sector shed jobs, too.
Further, BLS reported 162.75 million people were employed in August. Last August, 163.37 million people were employed.
Trump and the Republicans keep touting jobs, jobs, jobs and comparing their economic performance to President Biden’s, which they claim was lousy. The numbers show almost the exact opposite story, especially after the Biden-era pump-priming to battle the coronavirus crash, which drove inflation up temporarily, worked.
It created millions of jobs to replace those lost when half the economy closed up shop to battle the modern-day plague. Now inflation is back down to 3%-4% on an annual basis.
The 35,000-jobs jump in governments is all in local government, which added 50,000 jobs in August—with more than 80% of those in local schools. States shed 10,000 jobs in August, driving this August’s figures to 5,000 below those of last August.
The federal government lost 3,300 more workers, declining to 2.073 million. Last August, before Trump’s firings and the jobs decapitations from trillionaire Elon Musk’s chainsaw took effect, there were 2.324 million federal workers.
As usual, the private sector jobs growth concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors. The lowest-paying sector of them all—restaurants, bars and motels—added 59,000 jobs in August while the rest of the private sector added 27,000, net. Take away the bars, restaurants and hotels and a gain in health care (+28,400) which also is low-paying, and private firms overall lost jobs.
Factory owners claimed to add 16,000 jobs in August, rising to 12.638 million. Virtually all of that increase (+11,800 combined) was in fabricated metal factories, such as steel plants, and machinery manufacturing. Construction contractors claimed to add 22,000 new jobs, with half of those at specialty trade contractors.
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