Everyday Economics: Labor market found a floor. Productivity has to do the rest

Last week made the economy look a little less fragile. It did not necessarily make it stronger.

Employers added 162,000 jobs in August, unemployment held at 4.1%, and June and July were revised higher by a combined 55,000 jobs. After several weak months, the labor market may have found a floor.

But a bottom is not a bounce.

Nearly two-thirds of August's job growth came from restaurants and local government education. The schools jump mostly reversed July’s drop and looks like a seasonal-adjustment quirk, not a hiring wave. Long-term unemployment rose again, median unemployment duration climbed to 11.4 weeks, and wage growth slowed to 3.1%. Real average hourly earnings were already down 0.2% from a year earlier in July.

Hiring, quitting and worker turnover remain unusually low. The labor market looks stable but frozen. And I wouldn't expect a return to the hiring boom of a few years ago.

The labor force is smaller by almost 1 million workers since January. That means the economy simply doesn't need as many new jobs each month to keep unemployment stable – but it also means labor cannot contribute as much to economic growth as it once did.

So where could growth come from?

Productivity.

That's why the investment boom matters so much. In the second quarter, equipment and intellectual-property investment contributed about 1.2 percentage points of the economy's 1.5% annualized growth. Capital spending is already doing an unusually large share of the work.

But the payoff still has to arrive.

Labor productivity was 2.2% higher than a year ago in the second quarter – respectable, but hardly evidence yet of a transformational productivity boom. On a quarterly annualized basis, productivity grew just 1.4%.

We have the AI investments. Now we need the output.

That distinction matters for consumers too.

Real disposable income is essentially flat. Consumers are still spending, but incomes aren't rising anymore.

If hiring isn't going to reaccelerate materially, stronger productivity growth becomes even more important because productivity is ultimately what allows wages and living standards to rise without generating more inflation.

Otherwise, consumers will eventually have to slow down.

Housing is already slowing

Housing shows what the rest of the economy could look like if high rates persist.

Along with lower labor-market churn, home sales and homebuilding have weakened. High borrowing costs are still biting exactly where we would expect them to.

And that brings us to the Federal Reserve.

Next week: inflation takes over

The jobs report's somewhat misleading headline gave the Fed less reason to worry about recession.

But it doesn't give the Fed a new reason to worry about wage inflation either. Wage growth slowed to 3.1%, while unit labor costs rose just 1.2% on a quarterly annualized basis in Q2.

What's changed since the last CPI report is mostly outside the labor market.

Oil prices have surged again as Middle East tensions intensified, with Brent ending the week above $95 a barrel.

Manufacturing input prices remain extremely elevated: the ISM prices index held at 71.1 in August, with companies pointing to tariffs, metals and petroleum products.

Services are even more interesting. Demand strengthened, but the services prices-paid index rose to 72.6, its highest since 2022, while employment remained weak.

Labor-cost pressure is easing. Supply-driven price pressure isn't.

August Producer Price Index arrives Thursday, Sept. 10, followed by the Consumer Price Index on Friday, Sept. 11.

I'll be watching whether energy, tariffs and higher business costs are spreading into consumer prices – and whether shelter continues to offset some of that pressure.

Why we desperately need a productivity miracle

For households, the productivity question is bigger than AI or the stock market.

With fewer workers available to drive economic growth, faster productivity is increasingly what determines whether living standards can keep rising without more inflation. If that payoff doesn't arrive, the choices get harder: fewer job opportunities, shrinking purchasing power, persistently more expensive borrowing, and a federal government that could be forced to raise taxes or cut spending drastically.

The federal government is already expected to spend more than $1 trillion on net interest this year. Higher interest rates make that bill larger – leaving fewer taxpayer dollars available for everything else.

In other words, higher productivity is increasingly the path out of a much more painful set of economic and political tradeoffs.