The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, nearly triple the roughly 55,000 economists had penciled in, and almost all of that growth went to women, according to Fortune. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent, with labor force participation ticking up slightly.
Women picked up about 158,000 of the new positions, close to 98 percent of net payroll gains for the month, while men added only around 4,000 jobs. The result extends a broader shift already underway in the labor market: women have now surpassed men in total payroll employment for just the third time in US history.
Two sectors did most of the heavy lifting. Food service and drinking establishments added 59,000 positions, and local government education added another 42,000, together accounting for 62 percent of August's job growth. Healthcare and hospitality, both industries where women make up a large share of the workforce, showed particularly strong hiring, part of a broader pattern in service sectors where women captured more than 100 percent of net job growth as male employment in those same industries actually declined.
Wage growth did not keep pace with the hiring surprise. Compensation rose just 0.3 percent for the month and 3.1 percent over the past year, the slowest annual pace in recent years, a sign that strong headline job numbers are not necessarily translating into faster pay gains for workers.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal, cautioned against reading too much into a single month's gender split, noting that figure moves around a lot from one report to the next. She attributed most of August's swing to what she called the teacher effect, seasonal education hiring tied to the new school year, combined with a rebound in hospitality employment. The stronger than expected report also fed into inflation concerns among investors, pushing the odds of a September rate hike up to 52.6 percent.