Behind the Markets Podcast · Friday, August 7, 2026
The US jobs report for August indicated a lower-than-expected payroll increase, with a decline in leisure and hospitality employment. Analysts suggest special factors like the World Cup drop-off and seasonality in state and local government employment may have contributed to the miss.
“Uh, the low, uh, payroll increase.”
“First of all, 40,000 decline in leisure.”
“We also saw that the private job, private jobs was not anywhere near as bad, and there was a 50,000 drop in state and local.”
“So, you know, a lot of this drop, not all of it, but a lot of this drop could be, uh, attributed to some special factors, um, that doesn't mean that the job market is falling apart.”