The USA's employment slump

**Ed Butler** (0:02)
US jobs are under pressure.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
One minute I was talking with my manager about, you know, the work we were doing, and the next minute I was let go.

**Ed Butler** (0:11)
And in the States, we're told, there's fewer new jobs to be had.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:15)
It's not just the lost jobs that you need to look at, it's also what's happening to wages. Their wages aren't keeping up, and jobs are being lost.

**Ed Butler** (0:23)
What's going on in the labour market? That's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. Yes, I'm Ed Butler, and today we're going to be looking at the falling US jobs numbers, figures that are much worse than expected. Why isn't the US economy creating more jobs? Also in the show, why the US Treasury wants to make the Japanese yen great again? Meta's new spy glasses, are they a cool gadget or a scary weapon for peeping Toms?
First, though, those US job numbers. US businesses lost 23,000 jobs in July. Not a huge fall, but much worse than expected. It also came with a pared down assessment of previous month's figures, painting a much weaker picture of the overall labour market. Yes, the unemployment rate did hold steady, but the latest data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics seems to suggest that the high cost of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East may be bearing down on business sentiment. Our North America business correspondent, Samira Hussain, has been giving her assessment.

**Samira Hussain** (1:37)
It came as a really big surprise. You know, most analysts were expecting to see jobs gains, but we saw the exact opposite. And, you know, there are some that are saying, look, this also is very seasonal. If you look at things like how many government education jobs that were lost, that has to do with the summer season and summer school being over. But overall, as a headline, it's not really very good. Now, if you look at the way US markets have been looking at this, well, they're trading higher because they feel like the chances of a rate hike are lower.
I think you need to take a step back and think about the way the Fed has been thinking over the last few years. They have been looking at inflation as the bigger problem that needs to be addressed. And that, look, the labor market continues to show signs of strength, and they're not really too worried about that. You know, I think there are some that believe that the Fed will continue on with this thinking. This is just one not-so-great jobs report, but it also has so many other factors that are looking towards it. And I think it's really a situation in which the Fed might just keep going with the same track that they are continuing to concentrate on inflation and not as much about job growth.

**Ed Butler** (2:53)
Samira Hussain, well, that's the big picture. What's the view from employers themselves, the people who are hiring or who aren't hiring? Let's hear from Mark Brinsinger. He's owner of Lion Sports Bar in Philadelphia. Hi, Mark.
Tell us first quickly about your establishment. How many staff do you have? How big a place is it?

**Mark Brinsinger** (3:11)
Yeah, so we're a pretty well-known sports bar in Philadelphia. We're known for soccer. And we had actually staffed up pretty heavily for the World Cup. We brought on about 10 additional employees for the World Cup, and we had hoped to retain them even after the tournament ended. But unfortunately, with the current economic conditions after the tournament ended, we saw a huge drop in demand for people just coming out regularly and spending money with us at Lion Sports Bar. So unfortunately, we had to let pretty much all 10 of those employees go after the end of the tournament.

**Ed Butler** (3:45)
Wow, so business really feels down, does it?

**Mark Brinsinger** (3:49)
Not only does it feel down, it feels different. It feels like people don't want to go out anymore. We are a very seasonal business with summer being our slowest season, but it feels especially slow in comparison to the big boom that we had after the FIFA World Cup.

**Ed Butler** (4:04)
Okay, well, listening in here is Nicole Bacheaux. She's the Labour economist with the recruitment platform Zip Recruiter based in Seattle. Nicole, is Mark's experience the norm in the hospitality industry?

**Nicole Bacheaux** (4:17)
Absolutely. We've seen price volatility really impacting the consumer base in the US, and that's caused employers across the leisure and hospitality and retail space to respond. In the last couple of months of reports, we've seen a softening of demand for jobs.