By Kevin Flanagan
While the headlines surrounding the August Employment Situation report seemed to focus on the moderating pace of new hiring activity, in my humble opinion, the bigger story was the sizable drop in the unemployment rate.
The markets and headlines tend to focus more on nonfarm payrolls (new hiring), and I have no quarrel with that, so let's first get some perspective on that front. Total nonfarm payrolls rose by about 1.4 million workers, right around consensus forecasts. However, the overall gain was elevated by the hiring of 238,000 temporary census employees. Nevertheless,