Acting Labor Secretary talks August jobs data, growth signals

The US labor market saw an addition of 142,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in August while the unemployment rate moved 0.1% lower to 4.2% in the month. This jobs print fell below economist expectations for 165,000 new jobs in August.

To talk more about the jobs numbers and the state of the labor market, Acting US Labor Secretary Julie Su joins Yahoo Finance senior reporter Jennifer Schonberger, who finds cooling labor growth to be “part of the transition from the breakneck speed of job growth that we saw in the initial years of the recovery.”

“It’s a… labor market that remains very strong… by all indications, especially when you combine it with our strong GDP growth, the battle against inflation, the labor force participation. Again, women in the labor force broke the last record which we set, which was in May,” Su says. “Overall, the indicators of the economy are of strong, robust growth and not recession.”

Su also addresses a potential strike posed by Boeing (BA) factory workers later this month and general union fears around AI and automation.

“The parties are at the table and they’re negotiating. We’ve said from the very beginning that this administration supports collective bargaining. We believe that unions are good for this country and the jobs data reflects that, right, that we can build an economy in which workers come first, in which workers do well, and supporting collective bargaining is a part of that. And so, you know, we encourage them to stay at the table,” Su says about Boeing negotiations..

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.