Takeaway: Mortgage rates will see a little relief today on the heels of a weak jobs report that may delay anticipated hikes from the Fed.
The economy unexpectedly lost jobs in July, the second month in a row of surprisingly weak data, casting doubt on the theory that the labor market has rebounded.
- The economy lost 23,000 jobs in July whereas forecasters had expected a creation of 80,000 jobs. The revisions to previous months also removed 103,000 jobs from May and June.
- The “local government, education” category had a loss of almost 50,000 jobs, driving much of the miss relative to expectations. This category is notoriously tricky during the summer. Today’s reading may reflect delayed end of school year effects rather than true weakness.
- The unemployment rate also unexpectedly fell from 4.2% to 4.1%, but the change was driven by people no longer being a part of the labor force because they stopped looking for work rather than people becoming employed. Both the employment-to-population ratio (-0.06 ppt) and the labor force participation rate (-0.12 ppt) fell.
- The jobs report has been very noisy since the start of 2026, making it difficult to extract a true signal about the health of the labor market. The three month moving average of job creation entered negative territory last October (-45,000 jobs per month) before rebounding quickly in Q1 and Q2, hitting a peak of 142,000 jobs per month in May. Economists generally estimate that the breakeven rate for job creation right now is between 100,000 and 150,000. Today’s data pulls that three month moving average down to 20,000 jobs per month.
Today’s data brings down the odds of a rate hike from the Fed at the mid-September meeting, but we’re definitely not out of the woods.
- For the Fed officials who dissented in favor of a hike at the last meeting, today’s data won’t be enough to dissuade them from arguing for a hike at the next meeting. If the data stays like this, the others on the committee might have enough cover to resist joining them.
- There is also still time for the data to swerve in a different direction with another jobs report and two more inflation reports before the September 16th meeting.
