Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer criticize president after US added 29,000 new jobs in September, sharply less than the 84,000 economists had predicted Sign up for the Breaking News US email Send us your questions on how the Iran war will affect US voters in the midterms And as we bring you the latest on how the jobs report stands to…
Page F2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 2 October 2026
Forecasters missed August by adding too many jobs, then missed September by adding too few.
As it ran on the front
The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps a filing cabinet, and this week it keeps two folders open at once. One says August: 162,000 jobs added, against a forecast of 53,000. The other says September: 29,000 jobs added, against a forecast of 84,000. Same bureau, same calendar, thirty days apart, filed under opposite verdicts — a forecast blown past, then a forecast blown through.
Thirty days ago, the register read like an achievement: a blowout, The Hill called it, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.1 percent. This week the register reads like a decline: 29,000 jobs is a sharp drop from last month's gains, per the Guardian, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent. The line between a blowout and a decline, in this filing system, is thirty days and one tenth of a percentage point.…
…(cont) Of September's 29,000, the healthcare industry accounted for 17,000. The information, financial, and professional-services industries each posted losses in the same month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by the Guardian. The receipts do not break down the remainder by sector; they name which columns went up and which went down, and leave the arithmetic between them to whoever's filing the complaint.
The Federal Reserve's filing cabinet opened a third folder the same week: The New York Times reports the odds of an October rate increase dropped on the soft report, with bank officials signaling the same direction. A cooling labor market, in this drawer, reads as good news for borrowing costs and bad news for paychecks, filed under the same data.
Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer filed their verdict under "Trump's failing economic agenda," one month before the midterms, per the Guardian's live politics file. The Emerson College poll, filed September 24th, put the president's disapproval at 58 percent against 39 percent approval, the highest mark of his second term. The Hill's economy newsletter, filed September 23rd, had already noted the frustration chipping at his support in rural counties.
Run the forecast against the print, hon: economists missed by a wide margin in August and missed by a wide margin in September, in opposite directions, thirty days apart. The filing cabinet does not pick a side. It just keeps two folders, and this month, the second one is thinner.
“Same bureau, same month, and the headline flips from blowout to crisis depending on which Friday you read it. The jobs didn't vanish in thirty days — the forecast did, and that gap is exactly what gives the Fed room to sit on rates. Your rent doesn't move the day unemployment ticks up to 4.2 percent, but the bond market does.”
“One soft month doesn't make a trend — look at August, 162,000 jobs, fundamentals were clearly sound then. And a weak report means the Fed holds off on rates, which markets like, so if anything this number is good news. Did I just call a hiring slowdown good news? That's not usually how we play this.”
The receipts
Final jobs report before the midterm elections also shows the US unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2% US employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, a sharp drop from last month’s gains, and unemployment rose slightly to 4.2%, a sign of a cooling labor market in the final jobs report before the midterm election. The numbers were…
The odds of an interest rate change at the Federal Reserve’s meeting in late October have dropped following a softer jobs report and strong signaling from bank officials.
Unemployment rose slightly as American employers paused hiring with midterm elections just a month away.
· US added 162,000 jobs in August, blowing past expectations from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· US added 162k jobs in August, blowing past expectations from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Trump disapproval highest in second term amid economic woes: Emerson College from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Economic frustrations chip away at Trump's rural support from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.