September 05, 2014
The pace of job growth slowed sharply to 142,000 in August. Coupled with downward revisions to June’s data, this brings the average rate of job growth over the last three months to 207,000. The sharp dropoff was due in part to flat employment in manufacturing after two months of healthy growth and a drop in employment of 8,400 in retail. Wage growth was little changed. Over the last three months, the average hourly wage has risen at a 2.3 percent annual rate, virtually identical to the 2.1 percent rate over the last year.
On the household side there was little change. The unemployment rate edged down slightly to 6.1 percent, but the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) remained stable at 59.0 percent. By education level, college grads don’t seem to be faring well at this point in the recovery. Their unemployment edged up to 3.2 percent, while their EPOP fell 0.2 percentage points to 72.2 percent. Over the the last year, their unemployment rate has fallen by just 0.3 percentage points, while the EPOP of college grads is actually down by 0.6 percentage points. By comparison, those with some college have seen a drop of 0.7 percentage points in their unemployment rate and a rise of 0.4 percentage points in their EPOP.
