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Look, don’t get me wrong. The jobs report we’ve been eagerly awaiting this week was mostly good news: The economy added 162,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1%. 

However… not to be a Debbie Downer (shout out to a fellow Rachel from Lexington, MA), but today we’re diving into one of the report’s not-so-bright spots: wages. 

We’ll also check in on the people left out of the job report’s unemployment count, the states using their rural health funding to invest in health tech startups, and the 12-day business empires at the Minnesota State Fair.

Plus, the highest gas prices for Labor Day weekend, ever! Every day I'm more grateful that I don't own a car. — Rachel Kahn, temp newsletter editor
people waiting in line at a job fiar
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
Wage growth just can’t compete with inflation right now
The latest jobs report shows that, as inflation has risen during the Iran War, wage growth has continued to slide, Mitchell Hartman reports.
As he worked on this story at the office Friday morning, Mitchell Hartman kept getting interrupted by workers from a local HVAC firm installing new cables and ductwork in the ceiling above his desk.

So, he figured he might as well ask them: How’s the job going, compensation-wise?

“I mean, trending in the last couple of years, I’ve been getting consistent raises, but it doesn’t seem to really affect how much money that I’m able to spend,” said Kyle Wallis, a journeyman controls technician. “It’s like, I make more and more every year, but everything else is more and more expensive.”

Average hourly earnings — the broadest measure of compensation for working in this economy — were up just 3.1% year-over-year last month. That’s the slowest pace in more than five years. And there has been a pretty sharp slowdown in just the past six months.

Wages were growing 3.7% year-over-year back in February. And that’s the same period — since the Iran war started — when prices spiked higher for everything from gas to groceries.

“The American worker is working harder, productivity is up, wage growth is tepid, prices are continuing to rise,” said Kyle Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation.

Wages are tepid for a few reasons, starting with the “low-hire, low-fire” job market, which has made workers hesitant to quit, said Bill Adams, chief U.S. economist at Fifth Third Commercial bank.

“And one of the big drivers of workers getting higher wages is when they switch jobs to a higher-paying one,” Adams said.

So, what would generate more wage growth?

“A job market with more competition among employers for workers,” he said.

But right now, it’s employers who have all the leverage.
READ MORE


 
News you should know
Let’s do the numbers
  • Does a strong jobs report mean that the Fed will raise interest rates? The market seems to think so : Stocks fell this afternoon, with the S&P 500 down 0.4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 0.5%, and the Nasdaq falling 0.3%. 
 
  • The most common mortgage in the U.S. hit 6.71%, the highest it’s been in over a year.
 
  • Tesla debuted its first robotaxi, and the markets are… underwhelmed. 
Planes, trains, and automobiles
  • Even after President Donald Trump was forced to secretly switch aircrafts due to a security threat when leaving Turkey last month, he’s still planning on traveling in his gifted Qatari jet, which does not possess the same security fortifications as the “legacy” Air Force One. The U.S. has already spent $400 million fixing up the gifted plane, and Trump has said it’ll be upgraded further in the fall. 
 
  • An interesting nugget from the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, which compiles anecdotes from workers and business owners: Due to the increase in fuel costs, more businesses are choosing to ship their goods by train instead of by truck. 
 
  • If you’re driving anywhere for the long weekend, maybe shuffle some things around in your budget: AAA says we’re headed for the most expensive gas prices Labor Day weekend has ever seen.
Healthcare
  • Health plan costs are expected to jump for employers (and therefore workers) next year, according to a new survey.
 
  • When Moderna and Merck announced their successful trial of an mRNA cancer vaccine, their stocks went through the roof. Here’s how other companies are cashing in on the blockbuster medical development.
 
  • Earlier this year, Congress set aside $50 billion for rural health to offset more than $900 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next 10 years. But instead of using the entirety of their allocated funds to fill the budget hole, some states are instead betting on Silicon Valley. Can startups save rural healthcare?


someone holding a sign that says
Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Management are crying. They have to let go all those workers, and now they don't have workers to work. Now they have to pay a lot of overtime.”
— Margarette Nerette, vice president of long-term care at 1199 Service Employees International Union in Florida
Unemployment remained steady this month, at 4.1%. But there are tens of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of people who stopped working last month who don’t show up in the data: Syrians and Haitians who have lost work authorization due to the expiration of their Temporary Protected Status at the end of July. Nerette says around 35,000 of her union members relied on TPS for work authorization, and the loss is already being felt.
HEAR MORE
Dave app phone screen in front of stocks
Joe Christensen/Getty Images
Final note
Imagine making your yearly income in two weeks
For 12 days every August and September, the Perfect Pickle sells beer-battered pickle chips to some of the nearly 2 million people attending the Minnesota State Fair – and by the time the gates close for the last time, the Perfect Pickle will have made its money for the entire year.

“A business day for us is like a business month for somebody else," said Greg Klindt, one of the stand’s owners. “If we have a problem where we can't process credit cards for an hour, that's like being down for a week.”

Klindt places pickle orders four months before the fair – a distributor couldn’t absorb an order of that size on short notice; the pickles literally have to be grown for it. “They actually plant their pickle fields based on what I order in advance,” Klindt said.
READ MORE
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