The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that there were 661,000 job gains in August, which was much less than expectations. There was, however, a 145,000 upward revision to the previous two months. Putting things in perspective, we are still 11M jobs short of where we were pre-pandemic. The Unemployment Rate decreased from 8.4% to 7.9%, which was much stronger than expectations of 8.2%...but it was for the wrong reasons. While there were 275k job gains, the labor force decreased by nearly 700,000. The combination of job gains and people leaving the labor force pulled the unemployment rate lower.