US Added 336K Jobs in September, Nearly Doubling Expectations

Facts

• The US blew past the economist forecasts, adding 336K jobs in September despite Washington’s efforts to cool the economy and lower inflation.¹
• The increase to nonfarm payrolls nearly doubled the 170K expected by Bloomberg's survey of economists. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data Friday while revising job figures from August and July to show that 119K more jobs were created in those months than initially reported.²
• The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.8% and job gains were dispersed across various sectors. Leisure and hospitality (96K), government (73K), and healthcare (40.9K) saw the largest increases last month.³
• The startling report sent shockwaves throughout the economy as the benchmark 10-year Treasury note jumped more than 13 basis points to a 16-year high of 4.8874%. After a slow start Friday, stocks rallied with the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq composites seeing moderate gains.⁴
• However, the job growth poured cold water on the Federal Reserve's hopes that its policy of hiking interest rates would slow down the economy and bring inflation down to a benchmark rate of 2%. The Fed will meet again on Oct. 31-Nov.1 and is expected to raise rates another 0.25 percentage points.⁵
• The Fed will pay close attention to the next Consumer Price Index (CPI) report on Oct. 12. Inflation rose 3.67% in August — far above the 2% target.⁶

Sources: ¹NBC, ²Yahoo finance, ³FOX News, ⁴Reuters (a), ⁵Reuters (b) and ⁶New York Post.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Washington post. September's shocking jobs report is a wonderful reminder of how the US economy continues to thrive despite rampant alarmism from detractors. The recovery from the COVID pandemic has been a struggle the entire world has had to deal with, and few countries have rebounded as successfully and as quickly as the US has. Because businesses remain fully open, many sectors are experiencing a boom that is being enjoyed by millions of Americans. While there may be some concerns about inflation, continued job growth should still be considered a good thing for the economy.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Zerohedge. Not only is the US economy not performing in the way the Federal Reserve and Washington, DC want it to, but its 'job growth' isn’t helping as many working Americans as one would think. Despite a reported 336K new jobs, unemployment stayed the same and the number of newly employed workers only rose 86K — a five-month low. Most of the job gains were part-time while many full-time workers actually lost their jobs. Inflation remains high and workers are forced to take on multiple gigs to offset the decline in full-time opportunities.