At 8:30 edt this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released  monthly Employment Situation report for September.

The ES estimates the US economy created +156,000 new positions last month.  While enough to absorb the average number of people leaving school and entering the job market for the first time, the figure is below the average of +192,000 jobs created over the past three months.  Revisions to the prior two months’ estimates were also negative, subtracting a total of -7,000 from prior tallies.

For what it’s worth (not much, in my opinion), labor economists had been predicting the figure would come in at +172,000.

It’s important to remember, though, that the unemployment figures are the result of subtracting the number of job gainers from the number of job leavers.  The monthly figure for each is around 3.5 million; the difference between the two is statistically significant only +/- 100,000.

Positives in the report:  wages continue to rise at 2.6% annually; employment in the mining industry, which includes oil and gas, may be bottoming after two years of decline.

The real significance of the September ES is in its inoffensiveness.  There’s nothing in it that could even remotely be considered as a check on the Fed’s desire to raise short-term interest rates before yearend.