Things in the job market look to be slowing down, no matter what ALPA, the Teamsters, and UAW think is going on.

Hiring slowed this summer and unemployment rose in August, signs the labor market is cooling in the face of high interest rates.

U.S. employers added 187,000 jobs last month, while payrolls in June and July were revised down a combined 110,000, the Labor Department said Friday. Over those three months, a modest 150,000 jobs were added monthly on average, down from a 238,000 average gain in March through May.

…The unemployment rate was 3.8% in August, up from 3.5% in July—reflecting more Americans seeking work.

Still, the job market remains tight enough that most employers are holding on to workers, rather than laying them off, and are paying them more.

It’s nice the WSJ is on the optimistic side of that “tight labor market.”

The fulltime jobs number has been taking a hit for the past three months…

2nd month in a row with a decline in Full time jobs -85k,
We're down a massive 679k Full time jobs since June.
Sure looks like recession to me. pic.twitter.com/xAvNa9VwhL

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) September 1, 2023

…and every revision of the previous month’s numbers has been to the minus side.

Last month's kinda good +185k actually was a pretty bad +105k They revised June lower too.
3 years, I've yet to see an upward revision… pic.twitter.com/vQ8gy5Z7jr

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) September 1, 2023

Less good fulltime jobs available just as the couch potatoes come off the sidelines after the long COVID college loan break. I sure hope they’ve thought ahead enough to occasionally polish whatever skillsets they had besides PlayStation thumbs.

Student loan pause finally ended. Covid stimulus finally left the banks..
Now these idiots are optimistic…
WTF did you think would happen when you incent people not to work? https://t.co/EeFQau4e3O pic.twitter.com/TS7iGaXkmA

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) September 1, 2023

Employers aren’t handing out the cha-ching like Spanky chuckin’ dollar bills out a window anymore, either. Little brother Crusader sent me an article yesterday that I found kind of depressing. I guess this means I won’t be getting that $2M I’d been shootin’ for. Probably should have called Ed sooner rather than later after hearing what the UAW wants from automakers.

Procrastination has always been one of my worst sins.

After a few years of hefty pay increases for new hires, the trend is reversing, potentially spelling the end to a brief golden age of wage growth for job seekers.

That’s according to data collected by online job board ZipRecruiter, which analyzed year-over-year changes in pay posted for more than 20,000 online job ads. It found that the average posted pay for more job titles declined more than increased so far this year. Last year, the opposite was true: Three-quarters of job posts offered higher pay compared to 2021. Additionally, 48% of companies surveyed by ZipRecruiter in July said they had reduced pay for certain roles this year.

Some of the decreases are dramatic: Posted salaries for CDL truck drivers are down 47.1% year over year, while Class A truck driver pay is down 32.9%, according to ZipRecruiter.

…And Gusto, a payroll software company, reported that pay rates for new hires at small and midsize businesses were 5.1% lower in July compared to a year ago.

Enough to keep Powell’s finger off the interest rate trigger? Survey says “yes,” for the moment.

CNBC said analysts attributed the drops in the trucking industry to Yellow going under and there’ve been 15K jobs lost as a result of the actors’ strike, but they believe that’ll resolve once they settle.

…For example, the transportation and warehousing sector lost more than 34,000 jobs. That was driven by a drop of nearly 37,000 positions in trucking, which the Labor Department attributed to a business closure. This is likely a reference to Yellow filing for bankruptcy protection in August.

Similarly, the 15,000 job losses in the information sector seemed to be driven mostly by the Hollywood strikes by writers and actors, which has largely shut down production in the U.S. The subcategory for motion picture and sound recording dropped close to 17,000 jobs, the Labor Department said.

“I’d say these are probably one-offs. … We wouldn’t expect that to continue going forward. But even if you add those back in, you’re still in the low 200,000 jobs, which is a downshift from mid-200,000s which we were seeing for much of the year, and even higher than that earlier in the year,” Patterson said.

“That said, even with these ‘weaker reports,’ you’re still talking about adding 180,000 jobs a month, which is well above the rate needed to account for new entrants into the labor market,” the economist added.

In one breath they say we’re averaging 200K jobs a month, but those revisions downward every month change those numbers, and I don’t know if they’re getting proper scrutiny or treated as afterthoughts. Tyler Durden over at ZeroHedge called today’s report “disastrous.”

You forgot your chart which visually drives that home. pic.twitter.com/H3Z1tTCjHC

— LincolnHillsFrau (@bayareahausfrau) September 1, 2023

I’m not going to argue with him. The Biden White House is playing smoke and mirrors with a hot shot number that then quietly gets erased, and a new, way lower one scribbled in two months later…when nobody’s looking.

His media cheerleaders aren’t going to do the revised math. They go with what they’re told.

Rah, team.