US Payrolls Grew in September, But Jobless Rate Shows Fragility

Jeffrey Cleveland, Director and Chief Economist at Payden & Rygel, reacts to the September jobs report.

US job growth picked up in September following a decline in the prior month, and the unemployment rate ticked higher, underscoring a number of cross-currents in a fragile labor market.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 119,000 after the prior month was revised lower, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Thursday. The unemployment rate ticked up to an almost four-year high of 4.4% as the labor force grew.

The dated snapshot, including the 4,000 drop in August payrolls, suggests an uneven US labor market prior to the longest government shutdown on record. Prior reports had shown anemic hiring amid a low-hire, low-fire environment. That has since given way to a rash of layoff announcements, exacerbating Americans’ concerns about their job security.

The September advance was concentrated in health care and leisure and hospitality. Manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and business services showed declines. Private payrolls increased in September by the most in five months.

This will be the last jobs report the Federal Reserve sees before its Dec. 9-10 meeting, and officials are divided over whether the slowdown in the labor market justifies another interest-rate cut then. Chair Jerome Powell said last month that another reduction in December is “not a foregone conclusion, far from it,” and “many” policymakers in October leaned against cutting rates again, according to the minutes of that gathering.

“The September jobs report may be backward looking but offers reassurance that the labor market wasn’t crumbling before the government shutdown,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note. “There is nothing in the data to warrant a change to our forecast for the Federal Reserve to leave rates unchanged at the December meeting.”

Treasury yields declined after the report, while the S&P 500 opened higher.

Separate data Thursday showed applications for US unemployment benefits fell to a three-week low in the period ended Nov. 15, the Labor Department said. Continuing claims, a proxy for those receiving benefits, climbed in the prior week to the highest since late 2021.

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