So much for the latest recovery: with not a single analyst expecting a NFP print below 190K, the BLS just reported that August payrolls tumbled from a revised 212K to only 142K, which was not only below the lowest Wall Street estimate of 190K, but it was also the the lowest monthly jobs print in all of 2014 and the biggest miss to expectations since the "polar vortex"! The Unemployment rate dripped modestly from 6.2% to 6.1% confirming yet again it has become a completely meaningless metric.
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The visual data breakdown:
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From the report:
In August, both the unemployment rate (6.1 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (9.6 million) changed little. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 1.1 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates in August showed little or no change for adult men (5.7 percent), adult women (5.7 percent), teenagers (19.6 percent), whites (5.3 percent), blacks (11.4 percent), and Hispanics (7.5 percent). The jobless rate for Asians was 4.5 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) declined by 192,000 to 3.0 million in August. These individuals accounted for 31.2 percent of the unemployed. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 1.3 million. (See table A-12.)
The civilian labor force participation rate, at 62.8 percent, changed little in August and has been essentially unchanged since April. In August, the employment-population ratio was 59.0 percent for the third consecutive month but is up by 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier. (See table A-1.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in August at 7.3 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)
In August, 2.1 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down by 201,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 775,000 discouraged workers in August, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in August had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
But while the above is largely meaningless, the most important data point for the Yellen Fed, hourly earnings, came in line, at a 2.1% increase Y/Y, and with 34.5 hours worked on average by all employees suggesting that contrary to the market's reaction, there will be no change in the rate hike calendar (at least based on today's update).
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