Big Miss in September Jobs Report
The September jobs report is in, and it’s a big miss at 148,000 jobs created, when economists had expected as much as 180,000. Mark Rigby, FOX News research analyst, breaks it down for us below.
This is the first time the Labor Department has released the report on a Tuesday, due to the government shutdown. It still released jobs reports on Fridays during the government shutdown of 1995 to 1996. The report is key to when the Federal Reserve will stop printing money to buy bonds in order to get the economy moving. The central bank has said it will stop when the jobless rate hits 6.5%. Most Fed analysts and even some Fed officials say tapering may not start until next year.
Peter Boockvar, managing director of The Lindsey Group, says: “The Fed is stuck in a policy that doesn’t work in creating jobs, as you cannot print them as the Fed would like. But if only it was easy for the Fed to get out, but they can’t as seen with the sharp rise in interest rates over the summer on the slight hint of it. Thus, we’ll continue to see an ever enlarging balance sheet with no tangible results other than higher asset prices which will then continue the dangerous disconnect between prices and fundamentals.”
Here are the highlights from the jobs report:
*Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 148,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.2%.
*Employment increased in construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing.
*The unemployment rate changed little in September but has declined by 0.4 percentage point since June.
*Number of unemployed persons: 11.3 million.
*Unemployment rates by working group
for adult men----------------- (7.1%)
adult women -----------------(6.2%)
teenagers --------------------(21.4%)
whites --------------------------(6.3%)
blacks --------------------------(12.9%)
Hispanics---------------------(9.0%)
*Civilian labor force participation rate: 63.2%, still remarkably low compared to other developed countries. The key to why the jobless rate is falling is because people are dropping out of the labor force. The last time the labor force participation rate was this low was August 1978 (also at 63.2%).
*The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more): 4.1 million. These are people who can’t get a job after looking for work six months or more. The 4.1 million figure for September is down from August’s number of long-term unemployed at 4.3 million, or 37.9% of the unemployed population. As of August, over the prior 12 months, that number has fallen by 733,000. But that’s not always a positive sign. People have permanently dropped out who can’t be tracked by the government.
*The number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons: 7.9 million, a large number by any measure. Likely why median income is dropping.
*Transportation and warehousing added 23,000 jobs in September.
*Employment in construction rose by 20,000 in September, after showing little change over the prior 6 months.
*Employment in wholesale trade rose by 16,000 in September.
*The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised from +104,000 to +89,000, and the change for August was revised up from +169,000 to +193,000. Last month's number of 169K was considered weak, but there were big downward revisions to the earlier months then as well. That means the economy had been weakening even before the shutdown.