“August Curse” Continues As Payrolls Miss, Rise By Only 151,000; Hourly Earnings Disappoint

With Wall Street expecting another solid month of payroll growth, following multiple-sigma outlier prints in June and July, the whisper expectations was for a miss on the back of the previously discussed “August Curse” which has seen a consistent miss in the month of August for the past decade, and that is precisely what happened when moments ago the BLS reported that in the month of August only 151K jobs were added, missing the consensus of 180K job growth by nearly 30,000 jobs.
The household survey did not bring any offsetting good news either as reported employment rose only 97,000 in August to 151.614 million.
The birth-death adjustment added 106K “jobs” to the unadjusted number.
The unemployment rate remained flat at 4.9%, despite expectations of a decline to 4.8%, while hourly earnings rose just 0.1%, also missing expectations of 0.2% increase, and down sharply from last month’s 0.3% rebound.
The labor force participation rate remained flat at 62.8% as the number of people not in the labor force rose by 58,000.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 2, 2016.