August Employment Report: Not the Blowout Report it Appears

… ▪ Leisure & hospitality added 62,000 jobs, the payback we have warned about since July, and the three-month average is the right way to read it. After revised declines of 54,000 in June and 21,000 in July, the industry has lost 13,000 jobs over three months, about 4,000 a month, the pace to carry for a summer stretched to 105 days by the earliest Memorial Day and the latest Labor Day the calendar allows. Before seasonal adjustment restaurants and bars shed just 700 workers in August, and against factors built for a midsummer roll-off that printed as a 59,200 gain. ▪ Local government education added 41,900 jobs after its 57,500 July drop, the second half of a seasonal swing that BLS describes as largely offsetting and that has no counterpart in the unadjusted data. Unadjusted, districts added 327,300 workers as the school year began, fewer than in any of the past three Augusts, and district payrolls are 51,100 below last …