The Fed keeping a watchful eye on employment and wage growth indicators.

For months we have been predicting job growth would slow down. This prediction was not only predicated on the forecasts for the economy to slow down, but also because we have now recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic-reduced recession. From here on out, job growth will be a factor of the growth of the adult population and returns by those who left the workforce.

Thus, when it was announced that the economy had produced 263,000 jobs in September, it was the smallest advance since April of 2021. But it was still seen as a strong number. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, keeping us near full employment levels. The decrease was mainly due to people leaving the workforce, though the labor participation rate was stable.

In today’s inflationary environment, all eyes were on wage growth. For the month, wages grew 0.3%, and they were up 5.0% for the year. These numbers came in on target with forecasts, with wage growth cooling, but not enough to convince the Fed that inflation is retreating quickly enough. You can be sure that the members of the Fed were watching these numbers closely. The next meeting of the Fed is at the start of November, one week before the election. Thus, we are expecting the rhetoric by the Fed will be toned down, so they are not accused of influencing the election one way or the other. But the jobs report will not deter them from another rate increase.