NEW YORK, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- American employers added 187,000 jobs last month, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reported on Friday, experiencing 31 straight months of growth, while the unemployment rate sank back to 3.5 percent, near a record low. However, experts and media cautioned these are signs that the country's labor market is cooling and rebalancing.
"The U.S. economy continued to generate sturdy employment growth in July, but it showed definite signs of cooling alongside the Federal Reserve's battle to suppress inflation," said The New York Times in its report of the figures.
"Revised figures for the prior two months modulated the economic picture slightly from an almost imperceptible slowdown to a clear deceleration after gains exceeding 200,000 had become the norm," it noted.
"We are converging towards a more sustainable pace," Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at the consulting firm EY-Parthenon, was quoted as saying. "The labor market is rebalancing, but it's a gradual process, and that explains why we're still seeing some tightness."
"America's job market is cooling. It isn't cool enough for the Federal Reserve just yet, but it is getting there," said The Wall Street Journal in its report of the DOL announcement.
"The pace of job gains is probably still far too fast to prevent the unemployment rate from heading lower in the months ahead," it noted. "And if the unemployment rate falls, it will reinvigorate worries over wage inflation, which could lead Federal Reserve policy makers to raise rates even more."
The upshot is that while job growth might still need to slow more to convince the Fed to ease up on rate increases, it might not need to slow that much more, according to the report. "The economy can probably handle more jobs than some people feared," it added.
