Friday, October 6, 2017

September's Jobs Report

The U.S. economy lost 33,000 jobs in September, primarily due to the effects of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. Nevertheless, the headline unemployment rate dropped to 4.2 percent, the lowest that number has been since 2000.

This was the first month in which the economy shedded jobs in seven years. On top of that, revisions to the employment numbers from July and August reduced the number of jobs added in those months by an additional 38,000.

The net loss of jobs is expected to be a temporary blip. For comparison, payroll gains had averaged 249,000 in the six months before Hurricane Katrina at the end of August in 2005. After the storm struck New Orleans, employment gains averaged 76,000 over the next couple of months before rebounding strongly to 341,000 in November 2005.

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