Job Growth Hit 162,000 in August: Report

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1%, preliminary figures just released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show. The biggest upswings in payrolls occurred in food services and drinking places (up 59,000); in local government education (+42,000) and in manufacturing (up 16,000).

Retail was among the sectors showing little change in employment, while the information industry shed the most jobs (down 23,000), the report showed.

As usual, these preliminary numbers should be taken with a proverbial grain of salt, as revisions often reflect major changes from the initial findings. Specifically, the release on August’s preliminary numbers also noted that:

* Total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised up by 11,000, from +20,000 to +31,000

* The change for July was revised up by 44,000, from -23,000 to +21,000.

Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors, the bureau noted.

“This jobs report did blow expectations out of the water,” Glassdoor Chief Economist told CNN. “We are definitely getting a bit of whiplash here, where it feels like the reports are alternating between good and bad; but overall, we’ll take the win.”