Financial Review

…Economy adds 157,000 jobs in July. Unemployment rate 3.9%. Wages remain stagnant. The skills gap is really the demand gap. Tariffs and the Fed could be stumbling blocks to full employment. Financial Review by Sinclair Noe for 08-03-2018 DOW + 136 = 25,462 SPX + 13 = 2840 NAS + 9 = 7812 RUT – 8 = 1673 10 Y – .03 = 2.95% OIL – .38 = 68.58 GOLD + 6.10 = 1214.30   The economy added 157,000 new jobs in July. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.9% from 4%. Most estimates were calling for 190,000 to 200,000 new jobs, so July numbers missed estimates but May and June were revised higher by 59,000. For the first 6 months of the year, average job growth comes in at 224,000 per month, which is very strong. Over the past 12 month, the economy has added 2.4 million jobs.   In July, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 7 cents to $27.05. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 71 cents, or 2.7 percent. And even those increases have been largely eaten up by rising in