Hiring slows in September with job growth of 29K

Filed 1h ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Dawn Endico · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

U.S. employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, and prior months were revised down further, with August cut from 162,000 to 133,000 and July revised into an outright loss of 10,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1%, and wage growth of 3% failed to keep pace with 3.4% inflation, prompting economist Kathryn Anne Edwards to call it 'a textbook weak jobs report.'

Health care added 16,700 jobs, a slowdown from its recent average of 33,000 a month, as hospitals in Vermont and New Hampshire announced layoffs. Government employment fell by 17,000, mostly in local government, while Black unemployment rose a full point to 7%.

National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told Fox News the rising unemployment rate reflects workers rushing back into a market they perceive as strong. The labor force did grow by 485,000 in September, though it remains a million below last year's level, and a competing ADP report found a 90,000-job gain driven largely by the Mid-Atlantic region.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

When the numbers go soft, somebody in Washington always finds a way to make soft sound like strength. Telling people they're flooding back into the labor force because it's so good out there is a neat trick when the same report shows wages losing ground to prices. A farmer doesn't tell you his thin cow is actually thriving, he just feeds her better.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Grim League · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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