U.S. payrolls miss in August as 911,000 jobs trimmed in revisions

The U.S. labor market showed much more weakness than expected in early September, with employers adding just 22,000 jobs in August and the Labor Department publishing a preliminary benchmark revision that cuts roughly 911,000 jobs from the official count for the 12 months through March 2025. The twin blows, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have intensified market expectations of imminent Federal Reserve rate cuts and renewed scrutiny of official jobs data.

The monthly nonfarm payrolls report for August, released Friday, recorded a gain of 22,000 jobs, well below economists' consensus of about 75,000 and down from July's revised 79,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent in July. The BLS's separate preliminary benchmark revision, published Tuesday, lowered employment for April 2024–March 2025 by about 911,000 jobs, the agency said, a downward adjustment that officials said reflects more complete state unemployment records and business birth-death data.

Market reactions were immediate. Short-term interest rate futures sharply increased the odds of a September Fed easing, with some measures showing probabilities as high as the mid-90s for a 25...