Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 29,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, coming in below economist expectations as inflation persists.
“Employers were likely responding to the tighter fiscal environment,” Nicole Bachaud, economist for ZipRecruiter, said in a statement, “as high Treasury yields and a Fed rate hike make borrowing more expensive, thus dampening plans for hiring and expansion in the near term.”
Notably, numbers for July and August were both revised down, BLS said; July was revised down by 31,000 jobs to a total loss of 10,000 jobs overall, while August saw a drop of 29,000 jobs to 133,000 jobs gained.
“Taken together, September’s report suggests August’s heat wave was more blip than breakthrough, and the labor market still hasn’t found a steady rhythm,” Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said in a statement.
In all, the report “points to greater caution among employers,” Ger Doyle, regional president of North America at ManpowerGroup, said in a statement. It may also reflect hiring becoming “more measured” and selective, Doyle continued, noting that high-demand roles at companies also take the longest to fill.
“In many cases, employers would rather leave a position open than make the wrong hire,” Doyle said. “The market is no longer defined simply by how many people employers hire, but by how precisely they hire.”
But as employers hold out amid uncertainty, runway will get shorter, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said in a statement.
“If policymakers can get the timing right and bring inflation down soon, the labor market may have just enough left to land,” Stahle said. “But a holding pattern is only safe while the fuel lasts, and every lap burns a little more.”