Employment growth slows in the United States, rising wages

The United States created 130,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, while economists polled by Reuters projected 158,000 on average.
The economy has also created on June and July 20,000 fewer jobs than previously announced.
The August figure may have experienced a usual adverse seasonal effect for that month, which suggests a possible upward revision in the coming months.
But the slowdown in job creation is consistent with the sharp contractions of activity in the industry and services highlighted this week by several other indicators.
The average number of job creations is 156,000 over the last three months; it remains above the approximately 100,000 needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.
For the third month in a row, the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.
Although Sino-US commercial litigation does not seem to have a particularly significant impact on the job market, the growth of the latter has not slowed since mid-2018.
The government estimated last week that the economy had created 501,000 fewer jobs than previously announced over the 12 months to the end of March, a downward revision of an unprecedented magnitude for the last ten years.
This suggests that job growth averaged 170,000 per month during this period instead of 201,000.
The revised figures will be published in February 2020.
In August, weekly hours of work rose again after falling in July to its lowest level in almost two years. It represented 34.4 hours in August against 34.3 in July. Average hourly income rose 0.4% in August after a 0.2% drop in July.
Employment in the industry rose by 3,000 in August after +4,000 in July. The building created 14,000 jobs last month after losing 2,000 in July, while distribution released 11,100, extending a trend that began in February.
Public employment jumped 34,000, boosted by temporary recruitments related to the decennial census of the United States population.

(Wilfrid Exbrayat for French service, edited by Marc Angrand)
by Lucia Mutikani