Friday’s lackluster non-farm payrolls report, which showed American employers adding far fewer jobs in August than expected, is likely to cool enthusiasm among Federal Reserve policymakers for a quick roll-back of stimulus, some experts believe.
The U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate dipped to 5.2 percent, the Labor Department said in its monthly labor assessment Friday.
Early in 2020, shocked citizens and social scientists predicted the widespread imposition of extreme “non-pharmaceutical interventions” in response to COVID would prove to have horrible and costly human and economic trade-offs — turns out they were right.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Economic Confidence Index slips to -12, from -6 in July and +2 in AprilRatings of current economy stable; more see economy getting worse...
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose for the first time in five weeks even though the economy and job market have been recovering briskly from the coronavirus pandemic.
States with Republican governors are leading the U.S. economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, while those run by Democrats – which tended to impose lengthier and stricter lockdowns on businesses – are faced with significantly higher unemployment rates.
