September 2018 Jobs Report

The most recent release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 134,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in September, falling short of economists’ predictions of 185,000 jobs. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, transportation and warehousing and health care. There was some concern that Hurricane Florence would skew the report, but Morgan Stanley stated that the area affected was likely too small to be a major influence.

The big story this month is the unemployment rate, which fell to 3.7 percent, the lowest it’s been since 1969. This comes on the heels of August’s nonfarm employment receiving a drastic upward adjustment from 201,000 to 270,000 jobs added.

No matter how you slice it, this is the strongest that the economy has been since the late 1990s/early 2000s dot-come boom. “I view this as the strongest labor market in a generation,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor. “These really are the good times.”

Wage growth slowed marginally. Though the month-over-month gain stayed the same at .3 percent, the annual growth fell from 2.9 percent in August to 2.8 percent in September. However, with employers having an increasingly difficult time finding qualified candidates for openings, the labor market is starting to be widely viewed as near or beyond full employment. As a result, wage growth will likely accelerate at a faster rate. That’s good news for workers on one side, but will likely mean higher rates from the Federal Reserve in an effort to control inflation.

In addition to rate hikes, investors are keeping their eyes on the bond market for a sell-off. When prices go down, bond yields go up, and they spiked to their highest level in over seven years on Wednesday on the heels of the ADP payroll report.

“The US economy is on fire right now and the bond market has been underestimating just how hot the economy is,” said Lawler Jasper, the head of research at London Capital Group. “What we are seeing here is that complacency start to fade.”