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
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