Unemployment Stays At 3.7% On Weak Job Growth

The Labor Department has released its employment statistics for the month of August. August had weak job growth with only 130,000 new jobs created. That was not enough to even cover the number of new workers entering the job market (571,000). But the unemployment rate stayed at 3.7% for the third month in a row. Keeping it from rising was nearly 100,000 more workers joining the ranks of the "marginally-attached" (workers who have given up and not looked for work in 4 weeks, and are no longer included in the official count of the unemployed).

A healthy economy should produce more than 130,000 jobs. This weak job growth indicates that employers may be nervous about where the economy may be headed (toward a recession brought on by Trump's trade war).

Here are the relevant statistics for August:

Size of the civilian work force:

163,922,000

Official number of unemployed workers:

6,044,000

Official unemployment rate:

3.7%

Demographic breakdown of official unemployment:

Adult men...............3.4%
Adult women...............3.3%
Teens (16-19)...............12.6%
Whites...............3.4%
Blacks...............5.5%
Hispanics...............4.2%
Asians...............2.8%
Less than HS diploma...............5.4%
High School grad...............3.6%
Some college...............3.1%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.1%

Number of marginally-attached unemployed workers (not included in official count):

1,564,000

More realistic count of unemployed workers (official + marginally-attached):

7,608,000

More realistic unemployment rate:

4.64%