US employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 per cent from 4.3 per cent in August, the Labour Department said Thursday.
The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labour Department revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August instead of gaining 22,000 as originally reported.
During the 43-day US government shutdown, investors, businesses, policymakers and the Federal Reserve were groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldn't collect the data.
The report comes at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high interest rates and uncertainty around Trump’s erratic campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. But economic growth at midyear was resilient.
The Federal Reserve policymakers are divided over whether to cut interest rates for the third time this year when they meet next month.
Economists expected to see a continuation of what was happening in the spring and summer: weak hiring but few layoffs, an awkward pairing that means Americans who have work mostly enjoy job security – but those who don’t often struggle to find employment.
The job market has been strained this year by the lingering effects of high interest rates engineered to fight a 2021-2022 spike in inflation and uncertainty around Trump’s campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and on specific products — from copper to foreign films.
Labour Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported.
