US August employment, Asian GDP and trade growth

US non-farm payroll employment increased by less than forecast in August. Reuters reports:

U.S. employers added 169,000 workers to their payrolls last month and the jobless rate fell unexpectedly to 4.9 percent, its lowest level since August 2001, a reminder of the economy's vigor before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

While August's job-creation tally fell slightly short of the 190,000 gain expected by Wall Street, the Labor Department said on Friday job growth in June and July was stronger than previously thought, bumping up the tally for those two months by a combined 44,000.

Job gains in August were broad-based, although factory employment slipped by 14,000 - the third consecutive monthly decline. Over the past year, the manufacturing sector has shed 110,000 workers...

The report showed construction payrolls grew by 25,000 - a figure surely to swell in the months ahead as rebuilding after Katrina gets under way.

The service-side of the economy created 156,000 jobs, spread across most sectors.

Average hourly earnings increased two cents, or 0.1 percent, with the year-on-year reading edging down to a 2.7 percent gain from July's upwardly revised 2.8 percent. The length of the average work week held steady at 33.7 hours.

As with other economic data, Hurricane Katrina will have an impact on upcoming employment data. The survey for the August jobs data had been carried out before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast.

In economic news out of Asia, South Korea's economic growth picked up momentum in the second quarter, with GDP growing 3.3 percent year-on-year, up from a 2.7 percent gain in the previous quarter, the Bank of Korea (BOK) reported yesterday. In Singapore, private-sector economists have raised their median 2005 growth forecast for Singapore to 4.4 percent from 3.8 percent in the previous poll in June.

In China, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said the country's exports in July rose 30 percent year-on-year to 65.58 billion dollars -- the lowest monthly increase this year -- while imports increased only 12.7 percent year-on-year. Actual FDI in July fell 4.9 percent from a year ago. The NDRC expects "significant changes" in export growth in the second half of this year or in the first half of next year at the latest.