Bank of America CEO on raising minimum wage: It's an investment in our teammates President Joe Biden stops to talk to the media as he drives a Ford F-150 Lightning truck at Ford Dearborn Development Center, Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in Dearborn, Mich. Ethereum's 27-year-old founder says we're in a crypto bubble. Did it just burst? Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and inventor of Ethereum speaks during Samsung Developer Conference in San Jose, California on October 30, 2019. QAnon is spreading in churches. These pastors are trying to stop it Left: James Kendall is the Senior Pastor at Grace Community Church in Madera, California. Kendall gave a sermon at his church warning congregants about QAnon. Right: Ben Marsh is a pastor at First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has seen members of his church share conspiracy theories on their social media pages. Carlos Ghosn says he has to tell his side of the story TOPSHOT - Former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn looks on before addressing a large crowd of journalists on his reasons for dodging trial in Japan, where he is accused of financial misconduct, at the Lebanese Press Syndicate in Beirut on January 8, 2020. - Ghosn arrived at the venue, making his first public appearance since skipping bail in Japan. The fugitive tycoon, who denies any wrongdoing, skipped bail while awaiting trial on multiple charges of financial misconduct including allegedly under-reporting his compensation to the tune of $85 million. (Photo by JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images) B25_25594_R James Bond (Daniel Craig) prepares to shoot in NO TIME TO DIE, an EON Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios film Credit: Nicola Dove © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (CNN Business) — The last time the American job market was this strong, astronauts were still going to the moon. The unemployment rate fell to 3.7% in September, the lowest level since December 1969. The US economy added 134,000 jobs last month, below expectations and the monthly average for the year. The Labor Department said Hurricane Florence may have impacted jobs results, with leisure and hospitality employment down slightly after trending upwards over the last several months. The good news is the previous two months’ gains were revised up by a combined 87,000 jobs, boosting the monthly average for the past year to a robust 211,400 jobs. Caroline Matthews/Lydia DePillis, CNN The historically low unemployment rate and relatively weak job growth number might indicate that employers are having an increasingly difficult time adding positions because of the availability of workers. Over the course of this year, recruiters have been more open to job candidates they may before have overlooked, such as those with criminal histories. The employment rate for people with disabilities has also jumped sharply over the past two months. Wage growth, however, has not accelerated. Average hourly earnings rose 2.8% over the year, slightly above the average over the past year but down from last month’s increase. Those numbers are not adjusted for inflation, which has been eating into wage gains over the past several months as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates in response to a strengthening economy. Other measures of income have been more positive, such as real personal disposable income (which takes taxes into account) and the employment cost index (which incorporates the cost of benefits like healthcare). Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of the employee review site Glassdoor, says the salaries people have been reporting through their platform show stronger growth than official measures indicate. “It’s still relatively slow, but it’s building,” Chamberlain says, expressing confidence that the Labor Department’s hourly earnings measure will break the 3.0% threshold soon. “I’m not sure there’s much slack left to wring out of this labor market.” Wall Street seems to agree. Bond yields spiked following the jobs report, with the benchmark 10-Year Treasury hitting 3.24% – its highest level in more than seven years. Investors are betting that there’s no reason why the Fed won’t raise interest rates again in December and several more times next year too. Stocks tumbled as a result. The Dow fell more than 200 points in mid-afternoon trading. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the population that is either working or looking for work, has remained essentially unchanged for the past few months. Professional and business services remained the economy’s strongest sector, with a cumulative 560,000 jobs added over the past year. Health care and transportation and warehousing have also continued their strong gains, adding 26,000 and 24,000 jobs respectively in September. Despite newly-imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, manufacturing added another 18,000 jobs. The National Association of Manufacturers have attributed continued growth to regulatory rollbacks and tax cuts enacted last year, and their quarterly survey shows that 73.2% of their members report attracting a qualified workforce to be their top business challenge. The retail sector shed 20,000 jobs, largely from garden and building material supply stores, after having showed relatively strong growth in the first half of the year.<doc-sep>The Dow Jones industrial average fell sharply after the jobs report came out, but experts view the dip in September hiring as a temporary blip. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said the U.S. economy is in an “extraordinary” period this week. Many other data points remain strong. Unemployment claims fell to a 49-year low last week, while July hiring was revised up from 147,000 to 165,000 and August’s from 201,000 to 270,000, further indication that businesses continue to add workers at a rapid pace.<doc-sep>
US figures have shown the lowest jobless rate since the year of the first moon landings, keeping the world’s largest economy on course for further interest rate rises. Eagerly awaited figures for jobs and wages showed less inflationary pressure in the world’s biggest economy than had been feared, but still pointed to more hikes by the Federal Reserve. Financial markets had been braced for a sharp sell off had the latest monthly payroll numbers indicated faster employment growth and pay increases in September, which could have paved the way for faster-than-expected monetary tightening by the US central bank. As a result of the figures undershooting the most optimistic expectations, losses were smaller than feared in early trading in New York but all the major US markets ended down with the biggest losses on the tech heavy Nasdaq exchange. Data from the Bureau for Labour Statistics (BLS) reported an increase in non-farm payrolls of 134,000 in September, well below the 180,000 predicted by Wall Street analysts. A 0.3% in pay left annual earnings 2.8% higher than a year earlier, a slightly weaker rate of increase than the 2.9% posted the previous month. Most economists said the jobs market remained strong, pointing to the drop in unemployment from 3.9% to 3.7% – its lowest since 1969 – and upward revisions to employment in July and August. Last month, the Fed raised short-term interest rates for the eighth time since 2015, to a range of 2%-2.25%, and indicated that there would be further increases “consistent with sustained expansion of economic activity”. The BLS said jobs growth was held back by temporary lay-offs caused by Hurricane Florence and the sense that the report was stronger than it looked meant shares and bonds were slightly lower in early New York trading. The Dow was down almost 150 points, while the yield on US treasuries – which move in the opposite direction to price – rose by two basis points to 3.22%. James Knightley, the chief international economist at ING bank, said: “The economy is on course for 3% growth, the jobs market is red hot and inflation pressures are on the rise. So while the Federal Reserve no longer describes monetary policy as being ‘accommodative’, it is certainly some way off from being ‘restrictive’. As such, we look for a quarter-point interest rate rise in December with three more hikes likely next year.” Guardian business email sign-up The effective interest rate – or yield – on US benchmark Treasury bonds had been going up ahead of the BLS release amid concerns that stronger inflationary pressure would trigger tougher action from America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.