The 315,000 increase in US payrolls last month is good news, says John Leiper, chief investment officer at Titan Asset Management:
Non-Farm Payrolls takes on greater importance this week in the wake of Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. 315k new jobs added during the month is good news and came in slightly above our expectations.
Further, more people have rejoined the workforce and as a result wage growth came in lower than expected with average hourly earnings at 0.3% versus 0.5% in July. That’s higher than policy makers will be comfortable with but is moving in the right direction and plays into an emerging narrative that labour-driven inflation may be peaking.
Bottom line, these are positive numbers but will do little to change the 75bp versus 50bps rate hike. All eyes now turn to the next US inflation print on September 13th.