U.S. added 390,000 jobs in May amid efforts to cool the economy.

Even though policymakers took steps to cool the economy and ease inflation in May, job gains remained strong.

Employers added 390,000 jobs in the month of August.

The unemployment rate is near a half century low. Average hourly earnings for employees increased by 10 cents, or 0.3 percent, on a monthly basis, and were 5.1 percent higher than a year earlier.

As consumers continued to shift their spending habits away from goods and towards services like travel, dining and entertainment, jobs growth was broad and led by the leisure andhospitality sector.

Overall employment has a deficit of about one million.

Andrew Flowers, a labor economist at Appcast, said that we could be at the employment level that we had in February 2020 by the end of the year.

Record levels of consumer spending, which makes up about 70% of the economy, have driven business expansion and job creation, as companies try to keep up with demand for a wide variety of goods and services The hiring push has given some workers a degree of agency when it comes to pay and conditions.

The Federal Reserve is concerned that rising labor costs will hurt efforts to bring down inflation, which is close to a 40-year high.

Powell said last month that the Fed wanted to ensure a more sustainable form of full employment by cooling off prices. He wants to have a labor market where people's wages aren't being eaten up by inflation. There is a place where we can have a long expansion as well.

The number of people who have been looking for a job in the last four weeks.

There has been a dichotomy between sour consumer sentiment and positive data throughout the year. The checking accounts are still above the levels of the previous year. The amount of households under duress is historically low. Debt-collection proceedings and new bankruptcies are both at their lowest levels.

Friday's report is the first sign that the Fed's plan to engineer a modest economic slowdown that avoids a painful recession could be achieved. Layoffs were at a record low, according to the Labor Department. The big gap between job openings and job seekers has narrowed.

Businesses with high profitability, easy access to capital, the capacity to automate, and pricing power are still eager to hire. Businesses that are seeing their margins squeezed by rising costs are pulling job postings as their outlook becomes less positive. Lower-paying employers are being squeezed out of the job market.