Labor
Nonfarm Payrolls — August 2026
The Employment Situation · released September 4, 2026 · 8:30 AM ET · Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The read · narrated
The read
Friday’s jobs report has two numbers in it. One of them moved the bond market. The other is the one the Fed actually weighs — and it went the other way.
Credit where it’s due. Payrolls rose a hundred sixty-two thousand, the most since March, and the revisions went up: June and July together, fifty-five thousand higher. We said to watch whether August revised July lower. It went the other way — from a loss to a gain.
Three months smooths it out. Seventy-one thousand a month since June, against a hundred forty-two in the spring. The best month in five didn’t change the pace. It interrupted a slower one.
And here’s what squares it with Tuesday. Payrolls are a net — hires minus departures. Tuesday’s report put the hiring rate where it’s been in only eight months since twenty ten, and departures haven’t been lower since twenty thirteen. Almost nobody hired, almost nobody left — and the difference between them can still be a solid number.
Now look at where the jobs were. Restaurants and bars, fifty-nine thousand. Local school districts, forty-two. That’s a hundred and one of the hundred sixty-two, out of the two most seasonally-swung lines in the report.
Then look at what they pay. The sectors that added jobs pay thirty-two fifty an hour. The two that shed them paid fifty-three seventy. Information lost twenty-three thousand — the highest-paying sector on the board.
Which shows up in the paycheck line. Wages rose three point one percent over the year, down from three point two. Outside the pandemic years, the slowest since twenty nineteen.
Here’s why that outranks the count. Jobs don’t cause inflation. Pay does. The Fed watches wages because wages are what turn a busy labor market into rising prices.
The bond market read it the other way. On the print the two-year rose three basis points and the thirty-year fell one — the front end pricing a firmer path.
On this data, we don’t see it. The count is real — hours rose, eight of ten private sectors added. But the sectors hiring are the ones that pay least, the ones that pay most are still cutting, and pay growth slowed again. If that turns, this read turns with it. Until then: watch pay, not payrolls.
The numbers
| Measure | Latest | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Payrolls | +162,000 · August | ▲ the most since March — three-month pace still 71,000 |
| Average hourly earnings | +3.1% y/y · August | ▼ slowest since 2019, outside the pandemic years |
The Employment Situation, August 2026, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, released September 4, 2026. All figures seasonally adjusted. The full print: total nonfarm payrolls +162,000 to 159,075,000; unemployment rate 4.1%, unchanged; labor force participation 61.6% (from 61.4%); employment-population ratio 59.1%; prime-age (25–54) participation 83.4% and prime-age employment-population 80.4%, both unchanged; average hourly earnings $37.75, up 10 cents or 0.3% on the month and 3.09% over the year; average weekly hours 34.4, up 0.1. Household survey: employment +569,000, labor force +683,000, unemployed +115,000 to 7.0 million; U-6 fell to 7.7% from 7.9% and part-time for economic reasons fell 414,000. Revisions: BLS states that June was revised up 11,000 (from +20,000 to +31,000) and July up 44,000 (from −23,000 to +21,000), leaving the two months 55,000 higher than previously reported. Our August 8 read carried July at −23,000 and closed by asking whether August would revise it lower; it did the opposite, and the decline we reported is now a gain. Industry detail BLS names: food services and drinking places +59,000, local government education +42,000, construction +22,000, manufacturing +16,000, health care +13,000; information −23,000 (computing infrastructure −8,000, publishing −7,000, broadcasting −5,000). The first two alone are 101,000 of the 162,000. The pay comparison is computed across all ten private supersectors, for each of which August average hourly earnings is published, and which sum exactly to the +127,000 private-sector gain: the eight that added jobs (+161,000) pay a job-weighted $32.51 an hour; the two that shed them (−34,000) paid $53.68 — 65% more. Leisure and hospitality, the lowest-paid supersector at $23.74, added the most (+62,000); information, the highest-paid at $55.53, lost the most (−23,000). Government is excluded from that comparison because CES publishes no average hourly earnings for it, so every pay figure here describes the private economy. Two sectors changing by under 10,000 (mining and logging, other services, +3,000 each) are omitted from the on-screen chart but included in the arithmetic. On the JOLTS comparison: the hiring and separations figures cited are RATES, not levels — the July JOLTS hires rate has been lower in 8 of the 198 months since 2010, and the separations rate has not been lower since March 2013; the levels are not multi-year lows. Trend: the three months June–August averaged +71,000 a month against +142,000 across March–May. Market reaction is from the U.S. Treasury daily par yield curve: on September 4 the 2-year rose from 4.34% to 4.37%, the 5-year 4.52% to 4.54%, the 10-year 4.77% to 4.78%, and the 30-year fell from 5.25% to 5.24%. A single session’s move reflects everything priced that day. Deliberately not cited: survey-of-forecasters expectations and purchasing-manager employment indexes, both of which are produced by private data providers rather than a public agency; this read compares the print to its own three-month trend instead. Next report: Friday, October 2, 2026, 8:30 AM ET, covering September.