US August Jobs Growth Beats Forecasts; Gold and Bitcoin Fall as Fed Rate Hike Odds Rise

According to Ecoiran and ArzDigital, both citing the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, on Friday, 13 Shahrivar 1405 (September 4, 2026), the US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, beating every estimate in a Bloomberg survey; the unemployment rate held at 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate rose to 61.6 percent from 61.4 percent, and June and July payrolls were revised up by a combined 55,000. Average hourly wages rose 0.3 percent from the prior month and 3.1 percent from a year earlier, the lowest annual wage growth since 2021.

Per ArzDigital, citing the Financial Times, immediately after the data's release the odds of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike at its September 15 to 16 meeting rose from about 50 percent to nearly 60 percent, and the two year US Treasury yield climbed to about 4.41 percent. Global spot gold, which had been trading above 4,472 dollars an ounce before the report, fell more than 100 dollars, while bitcoin dropped more than 2 percent within an hour to below 80,000 dollars; more than 200 million dollars in long crypto positions were liquidated within 15 minutes of the data's release.