Read the highlights of this week’s commentary from Helios:
The job market continues to exceed expectations with 315K new jobs in August, beating expectations of 298K and coming on the back of July’s significant increase. The report also showed wage growth was moderating, and the participation rate for prime age labor increased, pushing the unemployment rate up to 3.7
While a hot labor market can make the Fed’s job of taming inflation more difficult, if the participation rate continues to trend up, it could make the possibility of the Fed pulling off a soft landing a little bit higher, though still not high.
Initial jobless claims declined for their third week in a row and remained in the low to mid 200K range for the last few months. The latest figure fell to 232K, down from 237K the week prior and 252K in the first week of August.
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