BLS July employment reports ?3

11:54 07-Aug-26


The BLS reports for July headlined with a loss of 23K jobs when gains centering around 85K were expected.  June was also revised downward.  Yet the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth again to 4.1% because the Participation Rate and Employment Population Ratio also continued to do the same, coming in at 61.4% and 58.9% respectively.  Earnings were essentially flat.  The market took the bad news as good news, despite the FedWatch odds of a rate hike only dropping by a percent so far, to 44%.  They were at about a third just a week ago.  There could be no stronger sign of the wealth effect, with AI sucking capital away from everything else.  We'll see what Warsh has to say at Jackson Hole, three weeks from today.