The U.S. economy added back jobs at a far slower pace in August following an early-summer jump in employment, as an initial wave of reopening hiring waned and concerns over the Delta variant increased.

The Labor Department delivered its monthly jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday morning. Here were the main metrics from the report compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

• Change in non-farm payrolls: +235,000 vs. +733,000 expected and a revised +1.053 million in July

• Unemployment rate, August: 5.2% vs. 5.2% expected and 5.4% in July

• Average hourly earnings, month-over-month: 0.6% vs. 0.3% expected and 0.4% in July

• Average hourly earnings, year-over-year: 4.3% vs. 3.9% expected and 4.0% in July

Following back-to-back months of non-farm payroll gains of more than 900,000, employers added back the fewest jobs since January. Still, this marked an eighth consecutive month of net job growth, and brought total employment closer to pre-pandemic levels. The unemployment rate also dipped further to reach a pandemic-era low of 5.2%, while holding above the 50-year low of 3.5% from early 2020.

“While I know some wanted to see a larger number today and so did I, what we’ve seen this year is a continued growth, month after month, in job creation,” President Joe Biden said in public remarks Friday morning. “This is the kind of growth that makes our economy stronger.”

The previous two months' worth of payroll gains were upwardly revised, however. July's payroll gain was upwardly revised to more than 1 million from the 943,000 reportedly during the previous month. June's job growth came in at 962,000 payrolls, up from the 938,000 previously posted.

As of August, the civilian labor force was still down by more than 2.9 million members since February 2020. And the economy has shed a net total of 5.3 million payrolls since the start of the pandemic, with these losses getting recovered at a sluggish pace compared to the swift drop in jobs during the spring last year.

One of the main factors contributing to the major miss on headline payrolls growth was a slowdown in hiring in the U.S. services sector, which had previously seen strong employment gains in the early stages of the recovery. Leisure and hospitality industries added zero payrolls on net in August after adding 415,000 in July. Education industries also contributed far fewer payrolls last month than during July, with private education roles rising by 40,000 in August while declining by 21,000 in government education. Government and private education together had added more than 200,000 payrolls in July.