As reported here:
It was the first time since World War II that the economy had precisely net zero jobs created for a month. ...
[J]ob creation in July, which originally came in better than expected, actually wasn't as good as thought. The 117,000 jobs originally announced was cut to 85,000, while June's number fell from 46,000 to a mere 20,000. That makes four consecutive months of sub-100,000 job growth when most economists believe that 150,000 is the minimum number needed to reduce the unemployment rate meaningfully.
"Though much attention is being paid to ‘zero job growth’ in August, the real news in today’s numbers is that job growth is worse than in recent months, and the nation continues to produce far fewer jobs than needed to meaningfully reduce the unemployment rate," Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "In fact, in some ways the report was less than zero in that weekly hours fell, as did hourly earnings."
Average hourly earnings slid 3 cents to $23.09 while average weekly hours edged lower to 34.2.
Headline unemployment remains at 9.1 percent. The broader measure is at 16.2 percent, while the number of unemployed persons not counted in the numbers actually grew significantly.
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