By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) – U.S. payrolls growth likely rebounded in August as the drag from local government education reversed, but the anticipated recovery could be limited by job losses related to the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants.
The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday is expected to paint a picture of a labor market that economists say remains in a “slow hire, slow fire” mode, with the unemployment rate forecast to have held steady at 4.1% last month.
Labor market momentum has decelerated after surging in the spring, partly blamed on the oil price shock and supply chain strains from the U.S.-led war with Iran. Job growth was hobbled by President Donald Trump’s sweeping import tariffs in 2025.
“Businesses felt some of the problems from 2025 were behind, then all of a sudden we get another black swan event that introduces a new set of uncertainties,” said Brian Bethune, an economics professor at Boston College. “We saw significant problems with supply chains, oil and fuel prices went up, and that situation has not changed. So that’s why the job numbers have dropped from what we saw in the first few months.”
Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 56,000 jobs last month after declining 23,000 in July, according to a Reuters survey of economists. Estimates ranged from as low as another loss of 25,000 jobs to as high as a 121,000 gain.
August payrolls have a tendency to undershoot expectations, with economists blaming a summer seasonal quirk. Local government education employment dropped by 49,600 in July, and a rebound was expected to underpin payrolls in August.
A recovery was also anticipated in the leisure and hospitality industry after losing jobs for two straight months.
Economists, however, cautioned that those gains could be offset by the termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants, which impacted their work permits.
“We are assuming a 15,000 drag on payrolls from the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for unauthorized Haitian immigrants,” said Michael Gapen, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. “It could be much larger. The TPS-affected Haitians account for an estimated 160,000 of national payrolls.”
TEMPORARY DRAG FROM TPS TERMINATION
The drag, which some economists said could be temporary, would be evident in labor-intensive services sectors like healthcare, mostly care-giving. Some immigrants who lost their TPS could move to other visa categories.
“If payroll employment in August is a bit weaker than we expect, we would not necessarily dismiss weakness as only a result of the TPS expiration, as other data like hiring plans have been soft,” said Veronica Clark, an economist at Citigroup.
The Trump administration is cracking down on immigration, through deportations and revocations of TPS, shrinking the labor pool. That has drastically reduced the number of jobs economists say the economy needs to create to keep up with growth in the working-age population. Economists estimate the so-called break-even rate at between zero and 50,000 jobs per month.
Reduced labor supply, also the result of retirements, is keeping the unemployment rate lower, though some economists expected the jobless rate to rise to 4.2% in August, arguing the recent drop in the labor force participation rate was excessive.
“Participation has fallen a full percentage point since the start of the year, a decline that appears outsized relative to broader labor market conditions,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon. “The drop mainly reflects reduced population growth, aging demographics and rising retirements, and lower immigration flows.”
Barring a shock, August’s employment report was unlikely to impact the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision at the U.S. central bank’s September 15-16 policy meeting, with the focus on next week’s Consumer Price Index report. The labor market is not a source of inflation, with annual wage growth estimated to have slowed to 3.0% last month from 3.2% in July.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller said at a Reuters NEXT Newsmaker event on Thursday that he was inclined to argue in favor of keeping rates steady this month if upcoming data confirmed inflation pressures were cooling off.
Financial markets saw a 50% chance of a rate hike this month, down from 63.2% on Wednesday, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
Concerns about inflation and lack of forward guidance from the Fed have helped to boost U.S. Treasury yields, which economists said was a problem for the central bank.
Rising yields drove the 30-year fixed mortgage rate to a more than one-year high of 6.71% this week, data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac showed on Thursday, which could further undermine a struggling housing market.
“The markets have already dialed in tightening on the yield curve; we got 75 basis points of tightening and that’s going to slow down the economy,” said Boston College’s Bethune. “One of the reasons the long-term rates have been going up is because it’s pricing in uncertainty about what the Fed is going to do. That uncertainty is connected with political intimidation.”
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci )
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