US lose 263,000 jobs last month Unemployment rate at 9.8%

This morning’s NFP print took all of the market by surprise apart from Goldman’s revised predictions yesterday. The Sept. headline was a tad softer, but, not a number to panic over. It basically solidifies the theory that current conditions are holding somewhat steady, which also indicates that there is little sign of medium term improvement.

NFP fell -263k vs. a revised Aug. decline of -201k. Digging deeper, private jobs fell -210k vs. -182k and government positions contracted by a sharp -53k. Obama must now be worried by the public employment slippage. It’s probably a blessing that the decline was concentrated at the state and local levels and reflected cuts in both education and non-education jobs. The unemployment rate surprised, it edged up only 1bp to 9.8%. It’s somewhat a deceiving print. The actual print was 9.9832% and very much in danger of being rounded up instead of down! Another factor kept the lid on the lower reported print was the drop in the already low participation rate (the -571k decline in the labor-force offset much of the -785k plunge in household survey jobs).

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