The US economy generated a lower-than-expected 173,000 new jobs in August, the government reported Friday, but upward revisions to previous months' data sweetened the picture for hiring across the country.The overall unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent in July, hitting the lowest level since April 2008, as the country began to plunge into recession, the Labor Department said.The drop in the jobless rate was helped by the department revising the job creation numbers for June and July up by a total of 44,000 positions, which took the monthly average for the June-August period to a healthy 221,000 jobs a month.Wage gains - an important indicator for inflation - remained muted, rising eight cents an hour to $25.09 from July, up 2.2 percnt from a year ago.