August unemployment rate plummets to 8.4%, well beyond even long-term expectations

Directly on par with economic expectations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the economy restored 1.4 million jobs in August. But far exceeding expectations is the unemployment rate, which has abruptly fallen to 8.4%.

That comes after the Congressional Budget Office’s April projection anticipating double-digit unemployment would stay with us for all of this year and next. The Federal Reserve predicted in June that unemployment would be at 9.3% by the year’s end. And just before this report’s release, experts anticipated that our unemployment rate would fall to 9.8%, more than a full point higher than the BLS’s actual result.