Magically, Unemployment & Payrolls Hold Up

Somehow, someway, the official employment data from the Labor Department managed to hold up in September.  The Labor Department reported that September’s unemployment rate was flat from the months before at 9.1% and it reported that the creation of non-farm payrolls was 103,000.  Dow Jones had estimates of 9.1% and 60,000 on the nonfarm payrolls.

The private sector was actually credited for creating 137,000 jobs during the month of September.  Another help is from the revisions in nonfarm payrolls for the two prior months: August was revised to +57,000 from FLAT and +127,000 in July.  Average hourly earnings ticked up by $0.04 per hour sequentially to $23.12.

The good news is that this data could have been far worse and it also makes the awful report for August look less bad than originally projected.  The bad news is that this is till not anywhere close enough to a growth economy and employment remains challenging.

JON C. OGG