U.S. payrolls rose 162,000 in August; unemployment held at 4.1 percent

U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by 162,000 in August and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on 4 September. The gain was far above the 31,000 average monthly increase over the prior 12 months. Private payrolls rose by 127,000 to 135.75 million. Government payrolls rose by 35,000 to 23.32 million. Total nonfarm employment stood at 159.07 million.

Food services and drinking places added 59,000 jobs, against a 12,000 average over the previous year. Local-government education added 42,000, largely reversing a drop the month before, and has shown little net change since January 2025. Manufacturing rose by 16,000 and is up 58,000 from a low in December 2025. The information industry lost jobs. A Joint Economic Committee readout put leisure and hospitality at plus 62,000 and state and local government at plus 40,000, with information at minus 23,000 and financial activities at minus 11,000.

Average hourly earnings for all private nonfarm employees rose 10 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $37.75. Over the year they are up 3.1 percent. Production and nonsupervisory employees rose 11 cents to $32.53. The household survey showed the labour force rising by 683,000 and employment by 569,000. The participation rate moved from 61.4 percent to 61.6 percent. The employment-population ratio rose from 58.9 percent to 59.1 percent. Discouraged workers were little changed at 441,000.

Revisions matter as much as the headline. July nonfarm payrolls were revised up, from an initial loss in some earlier tellings to a net plus 44,000 in the JEC revision table after a second look. June was revised down by 26,000 on one accounting. The August print will itself be revised twice. Markets treated 162,000 as a break from a weak summer, not as a final number.

The composition is the useful part. This was not a broad industrial surge. It was restaurants, bars and school-district payrolls, with factories adding a smaller increment and information shedding posts. A labour market that grows at the hospitality till and the school-board office can still leave the Federal Reserve with a 4.1 percent unemployment rate and a live debate about a rate cut later in September. Wage growth at 3.1 percent year-on-year is not the 5 percent print that forced the last tightening cycle. It is also not zero.

Participation ticking up 0.2 points is the household-survey detail that payroll bulls will cite. People came back into the count. That can mean confidence. It can also mean households that had stepped out are looking again because hours or second jobs are available in food service. Those two readings lead to different policy conclusions. BLS does not choose between them.

For the Fed, 162,000 versus a 31,000 run rate is the comparison that counts. Officials who wanted a cut to insure against a stall now have to explain why a month that added 59,000 restaurant jobs is still a stall. Officials who wanted to wait have an easier paragraph. One month does not close the file. It does change the sentence they write before the next meeting.