Taper Vapor! Only 235,000 Jobs Added Versus Expectations Of 733,000 (Hopes Of Fed Taper Go Up In Smoke) Silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum Rise

Well, after the dismal ADP print we knew that the August jobs numbers would be worse than imaginable. And they were!

A big miss on the topline job creation number — the establishment survey suggested only 235,000 jobs were created in August, versus expectations for 733,000 — has undercut what little chance there was left of a Fed announcement on tapering later this month. It should make for a very interesting debate among policy makers about forward momentum in the labor market.

The shocker was in the leisure and hospitality sector, which created zero new jobs on net in August after figures of around 400,000 in each of the previous two months. There was a dip in hiring in other service sectors too, but nowhere near as significant. That could perhaps be due to some early impact from the spread of the delta variant in recent weeks.

On the household survey, the numbers looked better. According to those figures, the unemployment rate fell to 5.2%, in line with estimates, thanks to a 509,000 increase in reported employment. That also propelled the prime working-age employment to population ratio to 78%, from 77.8% in July.

Disparities narrowed in August as well, according to prime working-age EPOP ratios by race and ethnicity. Prime working-age Black EPOP, in particular, jumped to 73% from 72.2% the month before — outpacing the rest.

Equity futures pared a modest gain after the release, with contracts on the S&P 500 Index flat as of 9:09 a.m. in New York. With wages climbing, Treasury yields rose, with those on 10-year notes rising 4 basis points to 1.33%. The Bloomberg Dollar Index was down 0.3%.

The unemployment rate dropped which a misleading headline. That simply means that more people dropped out of the labor force than were unemployed. Not a good way to lower the unemployment rate.

Alternative investments silver, Bitcoin and Ethereum rose on the lousy jobs report as the US Dollar dropped.

The good news? US Average Hourly Earnings All Employees Total Private YoY rose to 4.28%! The bad news? US home prices are rising at a 18.61% pace.

The bad news? Black unemployment rose to 8.8% in August while white unemployment fell to 4.5%. This represents a widening of the employment gap that is higher in August than pre-Covid.

There are still over 100 million NOT in the labor force, higher than pre-Covid.

So, The Fed’s plans to begin tapering have gone up in smoke.