The U.S. jobless rate was down significantly last month and most companies had moderate hiring, as the country's economy showed some resilience to rebound from a recession caused by an ongoing global health emergency.
Around 1.4 million jobs were added for August, helping pull back the jobless rate to nearly 9 percent from 10.1 percent the previous month, the Department of Labor disclosed on Friday.
The retreat in the unemployment rate, which was down from 15 percent in April at the start of the coronavirus crisis, has placed the figure below the peak registered from the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Employment growth momentum is slowing while government relief aid and financial stimulus for small businesses have run out as talks between the House of Representatives and the White House for further bailout remain on the sidelines.
Market analysts polled by Dow Jones had been estimating growth of 1.32 million and the unemployment figure to weaken to 9.8 percent from 10.2 percent in July. Markets have reacted positively to the news, but shares retreated and continued offloading from Thursday.
The slowdown has put more pressure on legislators to revive the delayed negotiations for further fiscal relief and is expected to become a political leverage for both Republicans and Democrats with the U.S. presidential elections just around the corner.
According to PNC Financial Services economist Gus Faucher, the country is in "a very deep hole and we are trying to find our way out of it." Sarah Chaney of the Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying.
For Federated Hermes senior economic adviser Neil Williams, even if jobs are retained at this pace, it would take nine months for the country's 12 million people who lost their jobs since February to return.
Meanwhile, the total number of employees, who have placed on furlough, also dropped significantly. Around 24.2 million people said they are not working because their employer either shut down temporarily or totally lost the business as a result of the crisis.
The jobs market is in a disappointingly slower rate of rebound, Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at Oxford Economics in New York, noted.
Non-agriculture salaries were up by 1.370 million jobs in August after moving up 1.734 million from the previous month. Government jobs were up 344,000, with 238,000 temporary staff hired for the decennial U.S. census.
Meanwhile, market observers anticipate the initial hiring surge from business reopenings to slow down as government lockdowns are eased at a slower pace than earlier this summer.
