September Unemployment Rate Surprises while NFP Does Not

Earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that September’s non-farms payroll figures rose by only 114,000, generally in line with the consensus forecast. Of note, the previously reported data of 96,000 new jobs in August was revised upward to 142,000

The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 7.8% from 8.1%, while the forecasts called for a rise to 8.2%. Analysts had doubted that today’s data would sufficiently be able to notch the rate anywhere but higher; the rate has been continuously above 8% since February 2009.

Earlier in the week, ADP had reported that 162,000 new private sector jobs had been added last month, much better than the expected 143,000 but significantly fewer than even August’s revised figures of 189,000 (from 201,000). As markets have too often seen, the ADP numbers have failed to coincide with the NFP data on quite a few occasions and market players have thus been ultra wary of making large moves ahead of the data.

One research analyst in New York remarked that the labor situation isn’t going anywhere fast and that the meager gains were barely sufficient to absorb new workers, and not nearly enough for the masses who are still hoping to return to the workforce.

Wall Street had closed yesterday higher, with all of the major indices gaining; the DJ30  gained 80.75 points, the SPX500 gained 10.41 points and the NASDAQ gained 14.23 points. Today’s data is already positively impacting Wall Street futures.