Fed seen on course for rate cuts after weak jobs data

Any doubts the Federal Reserve will go ahead with an interest-rate cut next week fell away on Friday after a government report showed U.S. employers added fewer workers in October than in any month since December 2020.

The 12,000 increase in non-farm payrolls last month was far short of the 113,000 economists had anticipated even after they tried to account for tens of thousands of workers kept off the job by a Boeing strike and the impact of two large hurricanes in the Southeast.

The unemployment rate, however, remained at 4.1%, in what some analysts took as an indication that the labor market remains strong and much of the unexpected weakness in payrolls will be reversed when the strike is resolved and as hurricane damage is repaired.

Some 512,000 people reported they were unable to work due to bad weather, the most for any October since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that figure in 1976.

 

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