US hiring likely slowed last month (which may be good news)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The piping-hot U.S. job market may be cooling off, if only slightly.

But what business managers, policymakers, investors and economists want to know is this: How cool would be cool enough for the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve to begin to ease their aggressive interest rate hikes?

The government’s jobs report for September, coming Friday morning, is expected to show that employers added 250,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of economists by the data firm FactSet. That would be the lowest monthly gain since December 2020 and would mark a drop from an average of 438,000 from January through August. Yet by any historical standard, it would still amount to a healthy total.

Forecasters also expect the unemployment rate to stay at an extraordinarily low 3.7%.