Because of the federal government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics wasn't open to release its monthly unemployment figures at the usual scheduled time, on the first Friday of the month. So we belatedly got new jobs numbers this morning. And they weren't really worth waiting for: The economy created just 148,000 jobs in September.
That's a pretty tepid figure, down somewhat from the average of 185,000 jobs per month over the past year. On the other hand, August's figure was revised upward, from 169,000 to 193,000, and the headline unemployment figure dropped another notch, from 7.3 percent to 7.2 percent.
One result of the unexciting number of new jobs is that it makes the Federal Reserve less likely to begin tapering its asset purchases any time soon, which is good news for the stock market. The next Fed meeting is at the end of this month, and it's hard to see them considering this economy robust enough to warrant tapering.
No comments:
Post a Comment