August Payrolls Hit 162,000, Reviving September Rate Hike Bets
August nonfarm payrolls rose by 162,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data at 8:30 a.m. ET (3:30 p.m. in Istanbul); the LSEG consensus was around 55,000, so the print came in near three times forecast. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, and average hourly earnings rose 0.3% on the month to $37.75, up 3.1% from a year earlier. The revisions did as much work as the headline: July was flipped from a 23,000 loss to a 21,000 gain, and June went from 20,000 to 31,000. Most of the August gain came from food services and drinking places (59,000) and local government education (42,000), while the information sector shed 23,000 jobs.
The print reopened the Fed debate. Odds of a September hike had climbed to 63% after Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish Jackson Hole address, then fell to 54% when Governor Christopher Waller said he was inclined to hold rates steady as long as disinflation continued; pricing moved back to roughly 50% after the report. The policy rate currently sits at 3.50%-3.75%. Futures diverged premarket, with Nasdaq 100 contracts higher and Dow contracts lower, and the dollar index is on track to end the week 0.7% down.
Nvidia is buying Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The company confirmed the deal on Thursday, taking control of the largest distribution platform for open-source AI models and saying the platform will stay open to and other hardware.