Money News August 2026: Stocks, Inflation, Rates and Investing

The first week of August produced two facts that do not obviously belong in the same month. US payrolls went negative in July, and the two months before it were revised down by 103,000 jobs between them. On the very same day that report was published, the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high.

Neither of those is a prediction about anything. Both have already happened. Here is where jobs, inflation, rates and markets actually stand, and what is on the calendar for the rest of the month.

What happened to US jobs in July 2026?

Payrolls fell by 23,000, and the two months before that got much worse in hindsight. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the July employment report on 7 August.

The revisions are the part that got less attention than the headline:

That is 103,000 jobs removed from two months that were already published. The release states both figures itself, so this is not a reconstruction — BLS says May was cut by 66,000 and June by 37,000.

For scale, the release also gives the average monthly gain over the prior twelve months: 34,000. That is the bar the last three months were measured against, and it is itself low.

Underneath the headline:

• The unemployment rate did not move, at 4.1%, with 6.9 million people unemployed.
• Local government education lost 50,000 jobs and retail trade lost 19,000.
• Financial activities fell 14,000, and is now down 121,000 from a peak in May 2025.
• Health care is still adding, at +22,000, but more slowly than its own 12-month average of +36,000.
• Temporary layoffs rose 153,000 to 921,000.
• Average hourly earnings were $37.62, up 3.2% over the year.

Two quieter numbers are worth keeping: the labour force participation rate is 61.4%, down 0.7 points since January, and the employment-population ratio is 58.9%, down 0.5. A stable unemployment rate alongside a falling participation rate describes something different from a stable labour market.

Where does inflation actually stand right now?

Above target on every measure, including the one the Fed’s target is defined on.

It is worth being exact about which index the target is. The FOMC’s goal is 2% “as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures” — the overall PCE index, not the core one. That measure is 3.7%, 1.7 points above target, and it is the highest of the four.

Core PCE, at 3.3%, is not the target. It is what policymakers lean on as a guide to the underlying trend, because it strips out the food and energy prices that move the headline around — which is a different job from being the goalpost. Both numbers matter, for different reasons.

There is one genuinely new thing in that core figure. Our July piece on the Fed documented core PCE climbing in six of the seven months to May, reaching 3.41%. The June reading, published on 30 July, was 3.3% — the first fall in that run. One month is one month, but it is the first time that series has bent.

The headline CPI fall in June was energy, not a broad cooling. All items fell 0.4% on the month, the largest one-month drop since April 2020, and the energy index fell 5.7%. Core CPI, which excludes energy, was 2.6% over the year and barely moved. Over twelve months energy is still up 15.7%.

The next reading lands on Wednesday 12 August, when BLS publishes July CPI at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. July PPI follows on the 13th and July PCE on the 26th.

What did the Fed do, and when does it next decide?

It held, and three officials voted to raise rates. On 29 July the FOMC kept the target range at 3.50–3.75% by 9 votes to 3, with Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan all preferring a quarter-point increase.

The direction of that dissent is the thing to register. These were not calls for a cut. We covered the decision and the inflation curve behind it in full here .

Remaining 2026 meetings:

Meanwhile the market’s own borrowing costs moved without the Fed. The US 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.66% on 7 August, against 4.16% at the end of 2025 — 50 basis points higher so far in a year in which the policy rate itself has not moved at all. The last change to the target range took effect on 11 December 2025.

What have stocks actually done this year?

All four major indices are up double digits, and one of them set a record on the day the jobs report landed.

The S&P 500’s 7,757.64 was a record close, beating the 7,736.52 it set three sessions earlier on 4 August. It is worth being precise about which record that is: the index has still not regained the 7,793.68 it reached intraday on 5 August, so on that measure it was approaching a high rather than setting one — which is how some coverage described it that week. The Russell 2000, the small-cap index, is the year’s leader and sits a tenth of a percent below its own 4 August peak. The Nasdaq is the laggard of the four relative to its own high, 1.5% below the peak it set back on 2 June.

Volatility has been unremarkable: the VIX closed at 14.90, essentially where it ended 2025. It is easy to forget it reached 31.05 on 27 March.

Gold is the outlier. COMEX futures settled at $4,399.70 on 7 August — up just 1.7% on the year, and still 17.3% below the $5,318.40 peak of 29 January. It rose 3.7% on 7 August itself, in the session after the jobs report — and that single session flipped its sign for the year, from down 1.9% at Thursday’s close to up 1.7% at Friday’s. Our gold piece was written before that session settled and correctly reports the 6 August close of $4,242 and a year-to-date fall; the two articles differ because the day in between moved 3.7%, not because either is wrong.

What is on the calendar for the rest of August?

No policy decision — but the Fed is not absent from the calendar.

Two things there are easy to miss. The Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium runs 27 to 29 August, on the theme “Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy” — not a policy meeting, but the one August event at which senior central bankers speak at length.

And on 28 August the BLS publishes its preliminary estimate of the annual benchmark revision to payroll employment. Given that this month’s story is two months being revised away by 103,000 jobs, a scheduled revision to the whole level is worth a note in the diary.

So: no rate decision until mid-September, but “quiet month” would be the wrong description.

What does none of this tell you?

Where any of it goes next. This article does not forecast the level of an index, the path of inflation, or what the Fed will do in September, and it does not repeat anyone else’s forecast of those things. That is a standing rule here rather than a hedge for this particular month.

It is worth being blunt about why, because August 2026 is a good illustration. A falling payroll count, a record equity close and a core inflation rate above 3% all landed within a week of each other. Any story that makes those three fit together neatly is doing so by choosing which one to emphasise.

What the published data does support is narrower and more durable:

• The labour market produced 60,000 jobs across three months, and that figure is only known because two of those months were revised down after publication. Revisions are not noise; they changed the picture.
• Inflation has not returned to target on any measure, and the index the Fed’s goal is actually defined on — overall PCE — is the furthest above it of the four, at 3.7%.
• The policy rate has not moved since December 2025, while the 10-year yield has risen 50 basis points.

If you want the structural version of the investing question rather than the monthly one, our look at whether a US private pension is actually worth it covers who the workplace retirement system reaches and who it misses — a question the monthly data never answers.

Sources

Checked on 9 August 2026. Market figures are closes from Friday 7 August, the most recent settled session.

Index and commodity closes are from Yahoo Finance daily data, taken after Friday’s settlement. Year-to-date changes are our own arithmetic on those closes against each series’ last close of 2025.