Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, August 7, 2026
The US saw a loss of 19,000 retail jobs and a general slowdown in hiring across sectors, with social services and education adding only 22,000 jobs, significantly down from previous months. This data, combined with a smaller labor force, suggests that a four-point-one percent unemployment rate is partly due to people leaving the workforce, potentially influenced by presidential deportation plans and baby boomer retirements.
“Now, we did lose twenty three thousand jobs, but fifty thousand of those were local education teachers and education workers, and a lot of that maybe just a seasonal difference of when people were taking off payrolls, because they usually come off May in June, and so that'll go away in the next month. And then the question is where's the rest of the job. We lost nineteen thousand retail jobs, but the rest of it was all just kind of lower hiring. Social services and education and health has been the big job creator, and we've been usually getting thirty forty fifty thousand a month in that category only got twenty two thousand, So hiring slowed down, but we had a four point one percent unemployment rate because a lot of people left the labor force. Labor force was a lot smaller again the second month. And what that's telling you is that the President's deportation plans are working. The baby boomers, except for Tom, are still are retiring now.”