The world’s largest economy added 142,000 net new jobs last month, according to closely followed employment figures.
Generally speaking, 200,000 or so is thought to be healthy.
Although there was a minor increase in pay growth, the unemployment rate decreased to 4.2% after four straight increases in earlier statistics.
Values before of the report release indicated expectations of a better performance than the one experienced in July, which caused significant losses in the stock market.
The dollar dropped relative to most other foreign currencies and was down about 0.5 cents to $1.32 against the pound.
Analysts explained this by pointing out that the data is below a threshold that could scare the Federal Reserve out of cutting interest rates, which is what is generally anticipated to happen later this month.
Over the past week, mining and energy companies have suffered as prices have dropped amid a lack of evidence that the US economy, while theoretically still growing, will avert a recession.
The US considers employment in addition to growth, whereas most other nations define a downturn as occurring after two quarters of negative growth.
As a result, only a special committee of economists has the authority to formally declare a recession.
