Well, coming into today's payrolls report we said that the number would be a beat and the only question was how big, as a result of millions of Americans seeing their emergency benefits expiring. Boy were we wrong: moments ago the BLS reported that with expectations of a 500K print and whisper numbers sharply higher, in September the US added just 194K jobs (in fact, the number came below the lowest of all but one of the 71 economist forecasts, with just Banque Pictet's Thomas Costberg forecasting a 0 print). Sept payrolls were down by nearly half from the upward revised 366K in August, the first back-to-back monthly drop in payrolls this yearand the lowest print of 2021 (even as then umber of Household survey showed an increase of 526K jobs in the month!), likely impairing the Fed's tapering schedule as this number was so bad as to pass as a "major shock" from the Fed's perspective, even if as the BLS itself admits a big reason for the drop was a seasonal adjustment in local government education, which may have pulled the number down by some 150K.
Putting the woeful September number in context, thus far this year, monthly job growth has averaged 561,000, roughly half of what Fed officials promised at the start of the year. Nonfarm employment has increased by 17.4 million since a recent trough in April 2020 but is down by 5.0 million, or 3.3 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. In September, notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, in retail trade, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in public education plunged over the month.
SOURCE: ZeroHedge