The U.S. Added 151,000 Jobs In August, Unemployment Rate Holds Below 5%

Total non-farm payroll employment in the United States added 151,000 jobs in August while the jobless rate claim is steady at 4.9 percent, according to official data from Bureau of Labor Statistics. Following the news, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY gained 0.55 percent on Friday.

However, the market expected 180,000 additions of jobs in August on top of 255,000 job additions in July. Similarly, market estimated jobless claim rate of 4.8 percent compared to 4.9 percent in July. The August non-farm payroll is lower than the average monthly addition of 204,000 in the preceding 12-month period.

However, the official data indicated that employment continued to move up in a number of service-providing industries. The number of long-term jobless claims, i.e., 27 weeks or more was essentially flat at 2.0 million. The data pointed out that such individual represented 26.1 percent of the unemployed.

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Similarly, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio remained unchanged at 62.8 percent and 59.7 percent respectively in August.

Among the sectors to add employment included healthcare, financial, food services, social assistance and professional and technical services. While mining witnessed downtrend, employment in other industries like construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, temporary help services and government recorded small changes from the previous month.

At time of writing, SPY was up 0.49 percent at $218.43.

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