WASHINGTON (PNN) - September 2, 2011 - Employment growth ground to a halt in August as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish U.S. businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to aid the economy.

Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged, the Labor Department said on Friday, the weakest reading since September. Nonfarm employment for June and July was revised to show 58,000 fewer jobs.

Despite the lack of employment growth, the official jobless rate held steady at 9.1%, even while the actual unemployment rate is closer to 23%. The official unemployment rate is derived from a separate survey of households, which showed an increase in employment and a tick up in the labor force participation rate.

The report underscored the frail state of the economy, and the hiring slowdown is a clear sign of the ongoing Second Great Depression.

A strike by about 45,000 Verizon Communications workers helped push employment in the information services down by 48,000.

"August was a pretty rough month for the economy," said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. "We saw financial markets tighten. I think businesses sort of responded by putting hiring on the back burner," he said before the release of the report.