Washington, D.C. — Center for American Progress Economist Michael Madowitz released the following statement today on the September 2019 Employment Situation figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today’s employment situation release showed unemployment rate of 3.5%, with 136,000 jobs added, and wage growth decelerating to 2.9% over the year:
The broader economic slowdown has now reached the labor market. Wage growth has slowed, and hiring has now fallen off significantly over the past year, especially in the private sector. This month’s jobs numbers follow months of other negative economic indicators. We’re seeing exactly what we’d expect to see in most of the economy—manufacturing is taking the biggest hit from Trump’s self-inflicted trade war, and the administration doesn’t seem to have any policies to lessen the impact.
So far, we’ve gotten lucky, and the spillover from manufacturing has been moderate—but households can only continue to prop up the economy, even at a slower pace, for so long. It’s clear there is less margin for error now, and the days of uneventful jobs reports, unfortunately, seem to be behind us.
Related resource: “The State of the U.S. Labor Market: Pre-September 2019 Jobs Release” by Galen Hendricks, Zoe Willingham, and Michael Madowitz
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