David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
September 1, 2023
President Joe Biden (Shutterstock)
The August jobs report shows the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking up slightly to 3.8%, still near historic lows, as economists say the increase is due to more people entering the job market.
"The August jobs report couldn’t be much better," declared Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "Job growth is solid but slowing. Unemployment rose, but for that right reason - more labor supply as participation jumped. Wage growth continues to moderate and hours worked rose."
"The rise in the unemployment rate might cause concern in some quarter, but I'm less worried," says professor of economics and Brookings senior fellow Justin Wolfers. "Looking beyond the month-to-month sawtooth, the underlying pace of jobs growth is +150k per month, which is more than enough to keep unemployment stable or falling."
Zandi says the report "has soft landing written all over it," referring to how the United States has recovered from the COVID pandemic's effect on the economy, after nearly two years of many, especially Republicans, claiming the U.S. was in or would go in to recession.
Wolfers appears to agree: "Look up your charts of what a soft landing looks like, and we're either on or near the flight path."
On Thursday Insider reported, "The US is nearing a dream no-recession scenario, according to Morgan Stanley's top economist.
Falling inflation and steady growth show the Federal Reserve is closing in on a soft landing, Seth Carpenter said."
This month's jobs report has many different factors affecting the bottom line, including some revisions to prior months, and the closing of the trucking company Yellow, and the Hollywood strike affecting total numbers, as Wolfers noted.
Summing it up, he writes: "So there you have it: The labor market is either just right, a little too cool, or a little too hot."
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