just 73,000 jobs in July<\/a>, well below the threshold of monthly job growth necessary to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%.\n <\/p>\n\n And the monthly report was even worse than it seems: The Labor Department also massively revised downward the job gains for the prior two months.\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s now clear that job growth has been anemic, based on the newly revised data: The average pace of monthly job growth from May through July was the weakest than any other three-month period since 2009, outside of the pandemic recession in 2020.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cPowell is going to regret holding rates steady this week,\u201d Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group, said in commentary issued Friday.\n <\/p>\n
\n But not everyone at the Fed shared Powell\u2019s view on the labor market. The Fed\u2019s latest decision generated pushback from within like it hasn\u2019t seen in decades.\n <\/p>\n
\n Fed Governor Christopher Waller and Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman cast dissenting votes, marking the first time that more than one Fed governor has done so since 1993.\n <\/p>\n
\n In statements issued Friday, both officials pointed to signs of weakness in labor market as a major reason why they dissented, while downplaying the potential effects of Trump\u2019s tariffs on prices. The Fed is tasked by Congress to address both high inflation and a weakening labor market.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe labor market has become less dynamic and shows increasing signs of fragility,\u201d Bowman wrote, adding that just few industries have propelled job growth this year, which remained the case in July, according to the latest data.\n <\/p>\n
\n Still, it may be too soon to conclude that the Fed has royally screwed up.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt was a disappointing report to be sure, but when I look at the data, we try not to make too much out of any one individual report,\u201d Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack told Bloomberg on Friday after the July jobs report was released. \u201cI feel confident with the decision we made earlier this week.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Last year, after the unemployment rate climbed quickly in a short period of time and there were similar calls that the central bank was too late to lower rates, the Fed stepped in with a bold, half-point rate cut to stave off any further weakening.\n <\/p>\n
\n By the end of last year, it turned out that the labor market wasn\u2019t falling off a cliff: In December, employers added a massive 323,000 jobs as the unemployment rate edged down from the prior month to 4.1%.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Washington \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 It took only a few days for the Federal Reserve\u2019s latest decision…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-112693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114958644302121773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}