- Job growth slowed to 164,000 in July
- The unemployment rate was steady at 3.7%
- Wage growth ticked up to 3.2% year-over-year
With Trump issuing fresh tariff threats against China yesterday, there was little chance of this morning’s payroll data swaying markets. Today’s jobs report wouldn’t have had much impact anyway—employment growth came in right around its year-to-date average, unemployment was flat in the middle of its recent range, and wage growth edged higher but remained in familiar territory just north of 3%. We have our eye on some of the more trade-sensitive sectors, which were mixed in July (manufacturing posting decent job growth, transportation and warehousing flat) but remain laggards year-to-date. Overall, this is still a labour market that is “strong” and “in a good place,” as Powell put it on Wednesday. The concern, of course, is that trade tensions will have a greater impact on the US economy in the coming months—a risk that is getting harder to dismiss. We expect the Fed will cut rates again in September.
