The U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August, including 238,000 temporary berths for census takers, dropping the official unemployment rate to 8.4 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Sectors hit hardest by the economic shutdown fared well: retail added 248,900 jobs and restaurants took on 133,600 more workers. The sectors are still 655,400 and 2.5 million jobs short, respectively, of last February’s levels.
Hotels remained weak, adding only 15,400 jobs. Construction gained only 16,000 workers and manufacturing just 29,000. The two sectors are supporting 425,000 and 100,000 jobs less, respectively, than before the shutdowns.
The movie industry added 13,900 jobs but is now employing only half the people it did in February.
About 7.3 percent of White people remain without work, while 13 percent of Blacks and 10.5 percent of Hispanics do. The Asian jobless rate, which usually tracks close to the White rate, is 10.7 percent.
Among college graduates, unemployment was gauged at 5.3 percent, while 9.8 percent of workers with only a high-school diploma are jobless.
The proportion of long-term unemployed people – those jobless longer than 26 weeks, who typically have a harder time finding work – rose from 9.2 percent to 12 percent.
The economy remains 10.7 million jobs short of February’s total, meaning than less than half of the jobs lost to the shutdown have returned.
Because of classification errors, the actual unemployment rate could be 0.7 percent higher than the official figure, the BLS noted, which would bring the rate to 9.1 percent.
TREND FORECAST: With fears of a “second COVID wave” being trumpeted by the media and a number of states extending lockdown restrictions, the “Greatest Depression” will worsen and unemployment will rise.
More than 16 million were still out of work as of 1 July, compared to about five million a year previous.
The U.S. labor department said the manufacturing sector will lose 448,000 jobs due to the expanded use of technologies, such as robotics.
