Labor Market Faces Cruel Summer

businessweek.com — Financial markets were expecting the U.S. economy to shed jobs in the August employment report, released Sept. 5, but a big jump in the U.S. unemployment rate took Wall Street by surprise. The weaker-than-expected data for August suggest the U.S. economy is headed for recession and puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower rates rather than raise them, as the Fed has indicated it wants to do. The unemployment rate jumped 0.4 percentage points to 6.1% in August. Even worse for the labor market, June's 51,000 decline was revised to — 100,000, for a net — 58,000 revision over the prior two months.

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