Read the highlights of this week’s commentary from Helios:
In September, 263K new jobs were added to the economy, cooling from August’s 315K, though ahead of expectations of a 255K gain. Prior month revisions were minor (+11K) but positive, and the participation rate ticked down to 62.3% from 62.4%. While the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, the unemployment rate falling due to people leaving the labor force isn’t a good outcome.
Also in the jobs report were signs there may be some weaknesses with layoffs in sectors that gained jobs in the pandemic, confirming some of the recent anecdotes in the press.
In other jobs news, job openings data for August was released this week and also showed some cooling, with total job openings falling to just over 10 million, down from 11.2 million in July. The decline is likely welcome news to the Fed, though the overall numbers are still well north of pre-pandemic levels, which were just above 7 million in February 2020.
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