Good news on jobs front

The United States added 110,000 new jobs last month, following a significant upward revision for the two prior months, the Department of Labor said. The department also revised its statistics for new jobs during July and August: 89,000 new positions were created in August, as opposed to the 4,000 job loss originally reported. There were 93,000 new jobs in July, instead of the 68,000 the Labor Department had foreseen. September’s gain, along with those in summer, marks 49 consecutive months of job growth, the Labor Department said. But don’t celebrate just yet, warned Nigel Gault, a U.S. economist at Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. “Even with the revisions, the evidence of a slowdown in the labor market remains clear,” he noted. “The areas we would expect to be weak due to the housing downturn – construction, credit intermediation – are shedding jobs.” Sure enough, in September, the national unemployment rate crept up to 4.7%, following August’s level of 4.6%. Slowing job growth, in addition to falling output, may indicate a need for another interest rate cut, this time of 50 basis points, Mr. Gault said.