August Jobs Report Blows Past Every Prediction.

The doomsayers had a rough Friday. The Labor Department reported that American employers added 162,000 jobs in August — nearly triple what the economists on cable news had penciled in. The consensus call, from surveys run by CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, was for a gain of around 53,000. The country blew past it. It was the strongest month of hiring since March, and it landed at a moment when a lot of people in the press had already written the labor market’s obituary. Unemployment held at 4.1%. Steady. Not creeping up, the way some had bet it would.


