Thoughtful Money with Adam Taggart · Saturday, August 8, 2026
The latest US payroll report showed a significant miss, with payrolls down around 23,000, described as a five-sigma miss. Michael Lebowitz noted that this weak number, combined with downward revisions to previous months, suggests the labor market is not as robust as portrayed. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, but this was attributed to a falling participation rate.
“Payrolls were down, I'm doing this from memory, but I think about 23,000 or so. And it was a five sigma miss, meaning, you know, pretty much nobody had a, a drop like that on their dance card.”
“And, you know, we're seeing a response in the market to day, basically as the market says, well, okay, then maybe, you know, we've been concerned about the Fed hiking rates. This maybe makes it likelier that the Fed is not gonna hike or not gonna hike as much.”
“So, um, what do you think about this? How significant is this miss?”
“It's a pretty crappy number. And and it's not necessarily bad. It's just the labor, there's nothing happening in the labor market and that's not good considering that more people in theory because of participation rate fell, more people in theory are entering the workforce every day.”