The September Jobs Report Is Out, And It’s Not Stellar

The U.S. economy added 150,000 jobs in September, down from the 167,000 (after being revised upward) jobs added in August. Economists were predicting, according to the Wall Street Journal, about 170,000 for October, and the lower numbers have caused unemployment to rise to 5% (up from 4.9%). It’s not terribly good news.

However, steady growth is something that two groups can be happy with: the Federal Reserve and the Clinton campaign.

I explained it over at RedState, so I hope you’ll read the full thing over there, but here are the highlights.

  1. The Federal Reserve can use this as evidence that it is about time to raise interest rates. And, this is actually a good idea for the economy, because while the financial markets may not like it at first, in the long term it means that we have confidence in the economy, which is something we’ve been lacking for a while.
  2. Barack Obama benefits with a boost in approval rating, probably. That, in turn, translates to good news for Hillary Clinton, who is running as more or less the successor to Obama’s legacy. Obama’s numbers are already being boosted by an overall distaste for Donald Trump, and the media reporting “good numbers” means it will go up.

The other bit of news here is that the labor force participation rate has gone up slightly, and the true unemployment rate (counting people who aren’t currently looking for jobs along with those who are) is just shy of 10%, which is still not a good thing. However, those aren’t numbers that will get reported, are they?

 

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