Overdue jobs report shows labor market regaining some footing
Nick Rummell
MANHATTAN (CN) — The first employment report in months released Thursday showed the U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs for September, more than double what many had anticipated.
The unemployment rate inched up to 4.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report, slightly higher than the 4.3% expected and the highest it has been since late 2021. A separate weekly unemployment report from the Labor Department showed 220,000 initial claims were filed last week, about what was expected.
While the post-government shutdown jobs report’s headline print was surprisingly good, those gains were offset by an additional 34,000 lost in July and August.
Further, most of the gains were concentrated in the health care and food and drinking sectors. Health care saw 43,000 additional jobs added in September, matching the 42,000-job increase average over the last year, while food and drink establishments gained about 37,000 jobs in September. Most other industries saw either marginal increases or slight decreases in employment.
“On balance … this report adds to the impression that, although labor demand has clearly weakened, it is not collapsing,” Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, wrote in an investor’s note.
The last federal jobs report that came out was back in September, which showed only 22,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. That lackluster report prompted President Donald Trump to fire his lead employment statistician at BLS.
Since then, the only employment reports released were by payroll company ADP, which had shown two consecutive months of job losses until the company reported 42,000 private sector jobs were added in October.
Other aspects of ADP’s report were worse, with wage growth flattening the last few months. Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a statement that “pay growth has been largely flat for more than a year, indicating that shifts in supply and demand are balanced.”
Prior to this week’s jobs report, Trump officials tried to temper expectations by blaming artificial intelligence for lower the hiring slowdown. “Firms are finding that AI is making their workers so productive that they don’t necessarily have to hire the new kids out of college,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said in an interview on CNBC on Monday.
While recent official job openings data is unavailable due to the government shutdown, groups like the Conference Board and others indicate job openings are the fewest since just after the Covid pandemic shutdowns.
The ripple effect from the recently ended shutdown will continue to affect further employment data in the next several weeks.
In a note published on Wednesday, BLS noted it would not release a jobs report for October, instead merging that data with the November jobs report. That report is now scheduled to be released on Dec. 16, a week and a half later than normal.
The agency also noted it would not publish its JOLTS report — which tracks job openings, quits and other separations — for September, instead including that data with the October JOLTS report due out on Dec. 9. The monthly JOLTS report looks back two months instead of one month like the jobs report.