Non-Agricultural Employment Increased By 1.37 Million In US
The leap in the US labor market continued in August and spread to the fourth month, raising hopes that the economy may continue to recover despite the ongoing pandemic and blockage of "aid to unemployed Americans and small businesses" talks in Washington. Non-agricultural employment increased by 1.37 million in August. This figure includes the 238,000 temporary workers employed by the Census Bureau. The unemployment rate fell more than expected, by about 2 percentage points, to 8.4 percent.
According to the median estimates of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, employment increased by 1,350,000 and the unemployment rate was realized at 9.8 percent.
While the yield of the Dollar and the US 10-year Treasury bonds fell after the data, the US index futures contracts recovered their losses.
This data shows that the improvement in the labor market continues, albeit at a more moderate pace than when their hiring took off. Despite these improvements, employment in the US is still 11.5 million below the pre-pandemic level. But the acceleration in employment growth will likely be due to containment of the coronavirus, as well as overcoming the congestion of additional financial aid in Congress.
Employment data show that the increases are broad-based to cover all sectors. Retail employment increased more than in the previous month at 249,000 in the period in question, professional business services increased by 197,000, and transport and storage employment rose 78,000.
However, there has been a notable slowdown in employment growth in the entertainment and accommodation sectors, such as restaurants, which have shown significant increases in previous months. Employment growth in this sector slowed from 621,000 in July to 174,000 last month.