August jobs report shows wages increased and hiring still strong

The August jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday showed that US wages are rising while companies continue to hire at a high rate.

Payrolls for non-farm employers rose by 315,000 jobs, and wages jumped 5.2 percent from the same time last year. The gains are backlit by an overall economic slowdown, however, with unemployment jumping two percentage points higher than estimated, at 3.7 percent.

The overall labor market participation rate has yet to match the pre-COVID level of 63.4 percent, coming in at 62.4 percent in August, with more people beginning to search for work as the pandemic risk factors continue to wane.

The Federal Reserve has expressed concern that the strong labor market shows a surplus of available jobs and not enough workers to fill them. “We have a calm center and lots of conflicting factors swirling around,” said Senior VP of marketing at Manpower, Jim McCoy to CNN.

McCoy described the jobs report as the eye of an “economic hurricane.” He continued, “But effectively what we’re seeing is that in spite of rising rates and supply chain issues that continue to plague [businesses], the jobs market is robust. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for employees.”

The coronavirus pandemic is still taking a noticeable toll on the jobs report, according to BLS. in August, 6.5 percent of the labor force was still working from home due to the pandemic, 1.9 million people reported losing the jobs because their employers had shut their doors because of COVID-19, and 523,000 people reported not being able to look for work because of the pandemic.