SSO - Another Strange Jobs Report

• In the latest report, the consensus forecast was for payroll gains of 479,000 and an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent. The actual numbers came as something of a surprise: 194,000 payroll gains (much worse than expected) and an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent (much better than expected).
• On its face, that seems counterintuitive: if the labor market produced fewer new jobs than expected, why did the unemployment rate fall by so much more than expected?
• Presumably, a large cohort of the people who would otherwise either have found a job or be looking for one were, instead, willingly not participating in the labor market. It will be interesting to see if that number changes significantly next month, as the enhanced unemployment benefits implemented early in the pandemic ran out in late September.

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