Washington (awp/afp) – The number of U.S. jobs fell significantly for the fiscal year that ended in late March, a decline driven entirely by the private sector, according to data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department.
According to preliminary data for the latest fiscal year, the US economy created fewer jobs than originally reported, with 818,000 fewer jobs than previously announced numbers.
This represents a 30% drop in estimates compared to the first announcement of 2.9 million jobs created over a year last March.
Although revisions to employment statistics are fairly common in the US, this one is significantly higher than the downward revision of 306,000 jobs made a year ago.
The fall is particularly significant for business services, which account for almost half of the revision (-358,000 jobs), but also the hotel and restaurant industry (-150,000) and the manufacturing industry (-115,000).
However, to a lesser extent, certain sectors saw an upward adjustment, notably private health and education services (+87,000), transport and logistics (+56,400) and “other services” (+21,000).
In total, U.S. employment, excluding the agriculture sector, represents 158.7 million jobs, a 1.6% year-over-year increase.
On the campaign trail ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, the data was particularly commented on by members of the Republican Party, who believe the health of the economy is less brilliant than President Joe Biden’s administration claims.
Rumors of a possible downward adjustment of between 600,000 and a million jobs gave them an argument to emphasize that the economic measures of the outgoing president and his vice president, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, have not had the announced effect.
This data could also increase market pressure on the Federal Reserve (Fed), as fears grow over the risk of seeing it act too late.
Markets are watching for signs of a slowdown in the US economy and potentially an impending recession.
So far, the Fed has refused to rush to start lowering interest rates, which remain at a 21st-century record rate of between 5.25% and 5.50%.
As the Fed arranges its traditional meetings in Jackson Hole (Wyoming) from Friday, its President Jerome Powell’s introductory speech will be particularly watched to find confirmation of possible actions on rates during the next meeting, scheduled for mid-September.
Markets are predicting an initial drop of 0.25 percentage points on this occasion, which could be followed by two drops of the same order before the end of the year, according to the CME Group’s monitoring tool, FedWatch.
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