US non-farm payrolls growth slows to a crawl in August
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Friday 05 Sep 2025
(Sharecast News) - Hiring in the US crept only a tad higher last month, undershooting economists' forecasts in the process.
According to the Department of Labor, non-farm payrolls grew by 22,000 in August (consensus: 75,000).
Revised data also showed that it in fact contracted in June, with non-farm payrolls falling by 13,000 (Preliminary: +14,000).
July's tally was revised up by 6,000 to 79,000.
As of 1332 BST, the yield on the benchmark 30-year bond was off by six basis points to 4.797%.
COMEX gold futures meanwhile were up by 0.86% to $3,637.70/oz. and euro/dollar by 0.59% at 1.1720.
The rate of unemployment ticked higher by a tenth of a percentage point to 4.3%, as expected, although the labour force participation rate did improve from 62.2% to 62.3%.
Average hourly earnings meanwhile rose at a 0.3% month-on-month pace, as anticipated.
The downturn in hiring was worst among goods-producing sectors, with non-farm payrolls shrinking by 25,000 after a 8,000 person drop in July.
Payroll growth in private sector services meanwhile slowed 85,000 to 63,000.
Government payroll growth also slowed and flipped into the red by -16,000 after an increase of just 2,000 during the previous month.
"While the US economy has been shedding jobs in certain sectors for some time, for example, the manufacturing sector, now there is a sign that the other sectors of the economy cannot make up for this by hiring more," said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB.
"The broad nature of the slowdown is likely to lead to concerns about the state of the economy, it could also lead to the ire of Donald Trump and even more pressure on the Fed to cut rates."
For his part, Bradley Saunders at Capital Economics argued that the rise in the participation rate would limit calls amongst the more dovish minded on the Federal Open Market Committee for a 50bp rate cut later in September.
He also noted that the preliminary benchmark revisions to employment growth between April 2024 and March 2025 would be released during the following week.
Samuel Tombs at Pantheon Macroeconomics was of a similar mind, saying the Fed was "more likely" to stick to a 25bp cut at its next meeting.
He pointed out in a post on LinkedIn that August payrolls were almost always revised up as more data was collected.
Furthermore, the recent rise in unemployment was "not statistically significant at a 90% confidence level over any horizon up to one year."
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