Sept 2017 Jobs Report

Economists had expected 90,000 new jobs but the US lost 33,000 in September (I think it’s the first decline since 2010). Probably has to do with the hurricanes.

Unemployment rate was 4.2% versus 4.4% in August.

The average hourly wage grew by 0.45 percent, for a year-over-year gain of 2.9 percent.

The report is another data point. I still think that the market probably has it wrong when it thinks that there’s a ~70% chance that the Fed will raise rates in December…

Chris

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Per the Wall Street Journal, “The sur­vey of busi­nesses counts a drop in em­ploy­ment if a per­son doesn’t work and isn’t paid dur­ing the sur­vey week. The house­hold sur­vey is dif­fer­ent. It counts a per­son as em­ployed as long as he or she keeps the job. That might make the house­hold sur­vey a more re­li­able gauge when busi­ness is tem­porarily dis-rupted…A sep­a­rate sur­vey of house­holds, rather than busi­nesses, pointed to a much stronger la­bor mar­ket. It showed em­ploy­ment ac­tu­ally rose sharply—by 906,000—in Sep­tember from the prior month and that the un­em­ploy­ment rate fell by 0.2 per­cent­age point to 4.2%, the low­est since 2001.”

I believe the hurricanes had a great effect on the survey of businesses numbers and we may well be on the way to a rate increase in December.

Travis

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