The American economy gained 130,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at a very sluggish 40,000 jobs. A lot of people gained employment (590,000) but a lot of people also dropped out of the labor force (364,000). The headline unemployment rate stayed steady at 3.7 percent.
![](https://practice.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog_net_new_jobs_august_2019.gif)
On the wage side of things, the news was very bright. Hourly wages for blue-collar workers increased at an annual rate of over 4 percent after adjusting for inflation. Weekly wages rose about 8 percent after accounting for inflation. These are quite astounding numbers. I hope I didn’t make some kind of dumb arithmetic mistake here.
So this is a mixed report. Job growth was pretty tepid but wage growth was terrific. Go figure.
UPDATE: Actually, wage growth was good but not terrific. More here.