Good news: Average hourly earnings growth was 0.4% month over month and 2.9% year over year. Bad news: The total employed people fell from 162.3 million to 161.8 million.

Real wage growth could accelerate in the fall and winter.

Year over year inflation growth is set to face tougher comparisons which could mean it decelerates. The exact time the comparison becomes more difficult depends on which inflation metric you follow. For example, core PCE inflation bottomed at 1.4% last August which means August 2018 will be the beginning of the end of easy comparisons. By December 2017, core inflation rose back to 1.6% and by March 2018 it hit 2%. The August CPI report comes out on September 13th. Expectations are for year over year core CPI growth to fall from 2.4% to 2.3% and year over year headline CPI growth to fall from 2.9% to 2.8%.

Another interesting factor is workers were underpaid in Q2. Productivity growth was 2.9% and unit labor costs fell 1%. Output was up 5%, while hours worked were up 2%. Compensation growth was 1.9% which fell from 3.9% in Q1 even though output growth was only 2.6% in Q1. Real compensation growth was 0.5% in Q1 and 0.2% in Q2.

Was The August Jobs Report Good or Bad?

Submitted September 11, 2018 at 12:11AM by AlexPitti https://ift.tt/2MkM27V