Unemployment rate falls to 5.4 percent
WASHINGTON — America’s payrolls picked up in August, with the economy adding 144,000 jobs, slightly less than economists were forecasting and highlighting the slow and uneven recovery in the labor market that jobseekers have braved.
The unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent last month from 5.5 percent in July, the Labor Department reported Friday. While the new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001, the drop in the unemployment rate in August came as people left the work force for any number of reasons. Economists were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady in August.
The gain in payrolls was short of the 150,000 net jobs that economists were calling for. However, it represented the biggest jobs gain since May and marked the 12th month in a row that payrolls grew.
“As far as employment growth goes, it was okay. Nothing good, but nothing terrible,” said economist Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. “For jobseekers, it’s an environment that provides them with some opportunities but finding jobs is still not going to be that easy yet.”
Job gains for July were revised up to 73,000, still a lackluster number but an improvement from the 32,000 advance first estimated. Payrolls for June also were revised up to show a larger gain than first reported.
The latest snapshot of the jobs climate comes just two months before the presidential election. President Bush, who hurried back to the campaign trail after accepting the Republican party’s nomination for a second term Thursday, and his Democratic rival, John Kerry, joust frequently over the health of the economy and the availability of jobs.
The new employment report “shows that our economy is strong and getting stronger,” Bush said Friday at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. “Our growing economy is spreading prosperity and opportunity and nothing will hold us back.”
The Kerry campaign, however, had a different view of what the latest employment figures mean for the economy. “Economically, after losing jobs, you’re supposed to have ever faster job growth to make up for it. That’s not what we’re getting. We’re getting mediocre, treading water job growth,” the campaign said in a statement.
Bush says his tax cuts have helped the economy rebound and that making those tax cuts permanent will spur more job creation. Kerry contends Bush’s policies benefit the wealthy, squeeze the middle class and aren’t producing significant job growth.
The economy has lost 913,000 jobs since Bush took office.
The payrolls figure and the unemployment rate can sometimes offering differing impressions of the labor market because they are derived from two separate statistical surveys.
The unemployment rate is calculated from a survey of around 60,000 households in which people are asked to state whether they have jobs or are looking for work.
The unemployment rate in August fell as the labor force shrank by 152,000 from the previous month.