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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Photo:
Tom Williams/Zuma Press
Despite Friday’s disappointing September jobs report, Federal Reserve officials have signaled in recent weeks the gains are likely to satisfy the thresholds they have laid out to start reducing their bond buying at their policy meeting next month.
In determining whether the economy had met its tests for beginning to scale back their easy-money policies, Fed Chairman
Jerome Powell
had set a relatively low bar for the central bank to clear. “It wouldn’t take a knockout, great, superstrong employment report,” he said after the Fed’s Sept. 21-22 meeting, referring to the figures released by the Labor Department on Friday.
Employers added 194,000 jobs in September, the report showed. That was below economists’ expectations, largely due to weaker hiring by state and local governments. Private-sector employers added 317,000 jobs in September, in line with the 332,000 added in August.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has dropped steadily, to 4.8% in September from 5.2% in August, partly reflecting a decline in the number of people who looked for work last month. The unemployment rate stood at 5.9% in June. Friday’s report also showed that hiring in July and August was slightly stronger than previously reported. Those revisions resulted in an additional 169,000 jobs reported for those two months.
Altogether, that appears to be enough to keep the Fed on track to announce a taper after their Nov. 2-3 meeting.
Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com
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